<h2>What is Xooki?</h2> Xooki is a very simple documentation engine, written in pure javascript, and thus requiring no specific server side technology. It is intended to be used in environments where no server side dynamic content technology is available (php, cgi, ...), or where storing the pages in mere files is important (to ease integration of patchs, for example) The features of xooki are a very simple template engine, a small footprint, and easy to use in browser edition when documentation is browsed directly on the file system. <h2>Quick start</h2> To start using xooki it's very simple: <ul> <li>[[download]] the zip distribution</li> <li>unzip</li> <li>open your browser on index.html</li> </ul> Then you will see a small toolbar at the upper right, where you can easily edit the page, create new pages, move them up and down in the table of content, and so on. Enjoy! <h2>How does it compare to other similar projects?</h2> First Xooki can be compared to a CMS like <a href="http://www.drupal.org">drupal</a>, but with a very limited scope. As with a CMS xooki is all about creating and organising content. The content is divided in pages, which are organised in a tree. If the scope of features of Xooki is very limited (no comments, no taxonomy, no special node types, ...), the main difference is that Xooki does not require any server side technology, because a xooki site is composed of pure html+css+javascript. It's also file based, which means that it is very easy to track versions in a SCM like subversion, or to contribute via patchs. Since Xooki is file based, it can also be compared to documentation formats and engines like docbook or maven xdoc. The main difference with this kind of technologies is that Xooki does not require any generation, it can be browsed directly, and any change is automatically reflected instantly. Another difference is that you can edit your pages in your browser, as you would do in any server backed CMS (except that here it's only available when you browse the site offline). <h2>Where can I see it in action?</h2> Xooki is self powered since day one, so you are curretly browsing a xooki powered site. The web design is from <a href="http://www.freecsstemplates.org/">Free CSS templates</a>, but you can use almost any template very easily. You can also see a more real world example of how to use Xooki if you browse the <a href="http://incubator.apache.org/ivy/">Ivy</a> web site. Indeed Xooki has been originally created for Ivy web site migration to apache incubator. Xooki is also used to power <a href="http://www.xoocode.org/">xoocode.org</a> web site and sub web sites, where the same template is used (actually xooki moved to this template after xoocode.org chose it). <h1>How does it work?</h1> In a few words the xooki engine start by loading a <a href="template.html">template</a>, which is written in pure html+css, then it loads the page input from a textarea with a specific id, then it process the input and inject it in the template, which is then rendered in the browser. If you want to have a look at how a page source looks like, you can simply use the view source feature of your browser on this page, and you'll see how it looks like. As you can see most of the page source is the content itself. But you usually don't have to worry about that, since you can edit the page in your browser as soon as you browse is offline. Yes, edition is only available offline (with file: protocol to be exact) because when you edit you need to save the modifications, and without any server side technology the only way I found was to save the file on your disk, which is useful only when you browse from the disk. So if you want to see the edition features of xooki I suggest you follow the quick start instructions above. <h1>How does the formatting work?</h1> Xooki uses a mechanism to process the input to render it as html very similar to drupal one: you can define input formats which are basically an array of input filter names, and an input filter is a function which process an input and return the processed result. For instance, you will find an url filter which recognise urls in your input and convert them in links. A few input filters are available in xooki, but you can very easily write your own as a javascript function like this: <code> xooki.input.filters.myfilter = function(input) { // replace a by b return input.replace(/a/, 'b'); } </code> Then you will need to include this filter in an input format: <code> xooki.input.format.define("myformat", ["url", "myfilter"]); </code> Then to use this input format you'll have to either define it as the default one in your config.json for instance: <code> {defaultInputFormat: "myformat"} </code> Or use it in a specific page: <code> xookiConfig = {inputFormat: "myformat"} </code>