First steps after installing eLML

After successfully having installed either the stable or the developer release of eLML you should have at least two folders on your harddisk: The "core" folder and at least one projectfolder (eg. the "gitta" or "elml" folder that are part of the stable version). For more information about the exact folder structure of eLML, check the Transformation chapter of the documentation. Once you have the necessary files install you can...

Please note: The examples below all refer to the GITTA-lesson "Introduction to Database Systems" that is included in the stable version. You will find the lesson XML file here:

gitta/IntroToDBS/en/text/IntroToDBS.xml

Of course these examples should also work with any other (valid) eLML lesson.

Validate an existing eLML lesson:

Open the "Introduction to Database Systems" lesson XML file in oXygen or XMLSpy.
Click on the "validate" button (and you should get a "Document is valid" message)

So that was easy :-) To make this work you must have the following statement in your "lesson" root-element:
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.elml.ch ../../../_config/validate.xsd"

Transform a lesson without a layout template

Open the "Introduction to Database Systems" lesson XML file in oXygen or XMLSpy.
In oXygen click on the "Apply transformation scenario" button. Since you didnt yet define a "Transformation Scenario" you will need to do this now. Its pretty straight forward but refer to the oXygen manual if you dont know how to do it. In XMLSpy just click the "XSL" button.
Choose the file core/presentation/online/elml.xsl file as input XSLT file (in oXygen you also have to define an output folder: choose any folder you like because the exact paths for storing files are part of the XSLT 2.0 files anyway).
Open the file gitta/IntroToDBS/en/index.html with any webbrowser (in XMLSpy the files are opened automatically).

Transform a lesson with your custom layout template (eg. 'gitta')

Open the "Introduction to Database Systems" lesson XML file in oXygen or XMLSpy.
This time use the following XSLT file for transformation: gitta/_templates/gitta/online.xsl
Open the file gitta/IntroToDBS/en/index.html with any webbrowser (in XMLSpy the files are opened automatically).

You should now see the same lesson but in the blue-ish "gitta" layout.

Create a PDF version of your lesson (oXygen only, see remark below)

Open the "Introduction to Database Systems" lesson XML file in oXygen or XMLSpy.
This time use the following XSLT file for transformation: core/presentation/print/elml.xsl
In your oXygen transformation scenario you will have to click the "Perform FO Processing" mark in the middle tab and you will have to enter a "real" output path. For example you can enter ${cfd}/${cfn}.pdf and oXygen stores the PDF file in the same folder as your XML file.

XMLSpy remark: The "pdf" button somehow does not work because it issues errors while transforming. But if you first create a "FO" file (using the XSLT transformation) and then process this file with the "PDF" button, then it works. I have no idea why it works in two steps but not in one. Any help is appreciated.

Create your first lesson

In your Eclipse workspace (where the "core" folder resides) create your project folder named "myproject".
Copy eg. from the "gitta" project the folder "_config" into your project folder and open the two configuration files to adapt it to your needs.
Within your project folder create a lesson folder named "lessonlabel". Please note that the lesson folder should be named the same as your lessons label attribute (lowercase, less than 11 digits, no special signs etc.).
Depending on the language of your lesson, create a language folder within your "lessonlabel" folder. Use the ISO 639 two-digit standard ("en" for English or "de" for German, "fr", "it" etc.) to define your language.
Within your language folder create a "text" folder for the XML file, PDF etc., a "image" folder for pictures, a "multimedia" folder for animations, movies etc. We only recommend the "text" folder to store the actual lesson XML file, the rest is optional.
Now you can start to create a lesson XML file. You should name it exactly as your lesson label but with the ".xml" extension.
The root element must be named "lesson". Here is an example of a lesson-element definition (including the validation file, the "elml" namespace etc.):

From this point on your XML editor should show you interactively the available eLML elements and you should be able to validate and transform it (as soon as it is valid) like shown in the above examples. Please refer to the extensive eLML documentation for more information.