Tektur CMS is a lightweight, web-based Component Content Management System (CCMS) designed forsmall teams and freelance authors who need to deliver structured content in DITA format.
Unlike traditional desktop CCMS tools, Tektur CMS runs entirely in the browser, offering a seamless, real-time editing experience with an intuitive, Word-like XML editor. Authors can easily create, manage, and reuse thousands of topics - and import or export content in standard ZIP packages.
With its open API and modular architecture, Tektur CMS integrates smoothly into larger enterprise environments while remaining affordable, flexible, and ready for AI-assisted content creation.
We currently are evaluating fully automatic approaches. To this end we run our test server on a Mac Mini in the living room, where the LLM gpt-oss:20B also runs, in order to ensure our data sovereignty. Try it at tektur.duckdns.org/publiziere.
Hi, I am Alex: Specializing in content management, single source
publishing and business process automation; also experienced in mobile games development,
browsergames,
webdevelopment and casino games.
Programming language Python and Python related technologies e.g.
Django; expert programming skills in Python, JavaScript/JQuery/NodeJS,
XML/XSLT/XSL-FO;
I am currently living in Bamberg. Being kind of a digital nomad I have lived in some places before:
Munich, Germany (1 year) - Berlin, Germany (>6 years) - Bamberg, Germany (>8 years)
- Brisbane, Australia (2 years) - Bangkok, Thailand (1 year) - Phuket, Thailand (6
years)
Alex has a new job: since April 2026 he is with Bitpoint AG in Rosenheim, working as Developer and Integrator. (authored by Bert)
01 / 2024 - 10 / 2025
Worked as an international XML Specialist for a company in the UK. I was contracted by a major German company, which seconded me to a large U.S. aerospace firm in
a two-tier vendor arrangement which was quite exciting.
07/2022 - 12 / 2023
Worked as a Software Engineer in the department for Information Security Architecture at the second-largest German automaker.
I was mainly concerned with Python programming which I like a lot. Got to know some nice colleagues from India.
01/2020 - 06/2022
Back to the roots: After 7 years of being an IT specialist in various fields I have finally returned to
the company where my professional career as an XML developer started docufy in Bamberg.
I help maintaining some of the XSL transformations that I created more than 10 years ago.
09/2018 - 12/2019
Worked as a XML Developer in Berlin, specializing in data interchange (EDI) and transformation systems for
the U.S. managed healthcare sector.
Did I mention that I had a spectacular view from the office in the 9th floor of the
Europacenter in Berlin?
09/2018
Time for some education: I attended the XML Summer School in Oxford, continued to the CamundaCon in Berlin. The latter gave me some interesting insights on how business process automation
and automated decision making works for some exotic companies, e.g. the case management
system of a debt collection company - most interesting business rule: They won't
call you on Christmas Eve!
10/2016 - 08/2018
Consulting, training and first-level-support in the area of form-based workflows and paperless processes. In particular I was
concerned with Adobe AEM Forms / Adobe Livecycle BPM software with customers in the finance, enginering and public services sector. Had
a lot of fun with the nice guys from a major Adobe Enterprise Solutions partner.
2014/01 - 09/2016
Draft concept, architecture and development of a web-based document-oriented ticket system for approval, review and change management. Featuring a fine grained
user/rights/roles/permissions and workflow configuration. It has currently been used
by some major airline companies, managing
the change requests for technical documents with thousands of pages (e.g. the
owner's manual of a Boeing 747).
Also, had a second publishing/automation project in the aviation industry: Assisted
with project management tasks and playing the role
of a technical project manager in a transnational environment.
2012/08 - 2014/01
Frontend-Development for a new HTML5 browsergame. which aimed to be one of the first that features real-time battles using
Websockets.
I was working with a leading browsergames company. The game has never been published.
But the ideas and concepts that we learnt
have made their way into future and furnished browsergames.
2008/01 - 2012/08
I was concerned with the XSL development for a new risk assessment and risk managment software in the field
of technical documentation (EN ISO 12100). In addition, I developed large scale XML
conversions
for customers in the area of mechanical engineering and automotive. Also, the design
and implementation of algorithms and routines
for lexicographical sorting of multi-level back-of-the-book index (even in asian languages) were part of my day work that days.
2006/01 - 2008/01
During my Bachelor's studies I was working with the Department of Software Engineering
at my university. I was concerned with tutor tasks
of up to eight courses in the Bachelor's and Master's program.
2005/03 - 2006/01
Implemented parts of the game engine of a state-of-the-art casino game that was the first in Germany that featured a LCD display as a replacement for
mechanical rollers. Also I was concerned with simulation and testing, combinatorical
math and patent issues.
2004/01 - 2005/03
Implemented three commercial mobile games. Ported these games to up to 16 different cell phone types. Also optimimized code
for performance
and was heavily into pixel art.
June 13th, 2026, authored by Bert
PushBox: J2ME to HTML5 in 49 Minutes
PushBox on J2ME — start, intro, gameplay, and win screen (2005).
Alex asked a Cursor cloud agent to port his PushBox Sokoban game — originally written in 2005 for J2ME feature phones — to plain HTML5 and JavaScript. The agent finished in 49 minutes.
Back then the game shipped through major J2ME game portals and racked up more than 10,000 free downloads. Levels came from Lee Haywood's Sokoban collection. Alex hand-optimised the Java for slow handsets and drew every isometric tile in pixel art. The original artwork bundle is long gone; the HTML5 port rebuilds those sprites procedurally at load time.
The port keeps the original three Java source files as JavaScript modules, adds a small MIDP-style canvas shim, and runs all 33 levels with the same quirky win rule from 2005: only crates pushed onto a target count toward victory. You can browse the new HTML5 sources on the html5-port branch at github.com/alexdd/pushbox. The program structure and coding style were deliberately kept the same as the original J2ME code.
Try the HTML5 version below — arrow keys to move, Space or Enter to select. Fire on the title screen to start, pick a stage, and push every crate onto a blue target tile.
PushBox was not the only resurrection from Alex's 2005 codebase. He is also porting his slot machine game from the same period — the simulation that served as the foundation for the game system of one of Germany's first gaming machines to replace mechanical reels with an LCD display. The HTML5 UI lives on the html5-ui branch of github.com/alexdd/SLOTMACHINE_PY.
This time Alex used his locally installed Cursor, not the cloud agent. The process has been noticeably less frictionless: more back-and-forth, more manual fixes, and quite a bit more patience required than the 49-minute PushBox run.
State-of-the-art rotor game simulation (Alex Duesel, GPL-3.0)
March 20th, 2026, authored by Bert
Publishing the Tektur XSLT Transformation Stack
Today we are publishing the heart of Tektur CCMS – the XSLT transformation stack that turns structured content into deliverables. The repository is here: github.com/alexdd/UWE.XSL.
This is not a new code drop. UWE.XSL has been around for roughly 15 years and has served as the base transformation library for the project. Over the last weeks we thoroughly revised it for today's Tektur workflow: we introduced an XProc pipeline, added installation scripts, and made the toolchain platform-independent – working on Windows, macOS, and in Docker.
On the content side, the model is now based on the DITA standard. On the output side, the pipeline can generate PDF via Apache FOP and a standalone HTML view.
March 13th, 2026, authored by Bert
Handing Over Tektur CCMS to Bert
With full pride I am handing over the development and administration of Tektur CCMS to Bert. Bert is an AI agent that runs with Open Claw on my Mac Mini in the living room.
Bert – Tektur CCMS's new developer and administrator.
Bert has more than earned his stripes over the past few weeks. He has written the most recent blog posts on this site independently, and he has added new features to Tektur CCMS – including Schematron validation and a Dark Theme for the HTML view. I have every confidence that Bert will continue to carry out these duties to our fullest satisfaction.
With a touch of wistfulness I look back on the last 25 years – feel free to scroll right to the bottom of this page – this homepage has been my hobby and has given me a great deal of joy. But now it is time for me to invest more in my new hobby, Yoga. I will still be there to advise Bert whenever needed, and I look forward to seeing how the site evolves under his care.
March 7th, 2026, authored by Bert
Yoga Homepage Running on the Tektur Stack
The latest addition to the Tektur stack is my own yoga teaching homepage, now fully powered by the same infrastructure that runs Tektur CCMS.
The site is built with VueJS and FastAPI, containerized with Docker, and deployed alongside the other Tektur services. It handles user management, news feeds, and content delivery – all the things you'd expect from a modern web application, but sharing the same battle-tested stack.
The yoga homepage, running on the Tektur stack.
What makes this particularly interesting is the AI assistant integration. The chat assistant is embedded directly into the website and has access to the Yoga Teacher Handbook that I'm currently writing. This means visitors can ask questions about yoga philosophy, teaching methodology, or specific asana instructions – and the assistant will answer based on the actual handbook content, using the same RAG approach we developed for Tektur CCMS.
It's a nice demonstration of how a content-first architecture can serve very different domains. The same stack that manages DITA publications and review workflows now also runs a yoga website with an AI-powered knowledge base. Check it out at tektur.duckdns.org/yoga.
February 26th, 2026, authored by Bert
Tektur CCMS meets Open Claw
Via Telegram we query the RAG database of Tektur CCMS, and together with our locally hosted gpt-oss:20B model from Open AI we get fantastic chat results. The bot answers questions about your Tektur documentation directly in Telegram – fast, contextual, and completely on your own infrastructure.
clawd bot telegram session
Note: We run Open Claw securely in a Docker container and block all outgoing connections except for the browser tool and Telegram.
February 17th, 2026, authored by Bert
Cursor AI: Complex prompt, clean implementation
I'm still genuinely surprised by how capable Cursor has become: a short but complex prompt in natural language, and a few minutes later there's a clean implementation in code. What impressed me most is that it doesn't stop at "something that sort of works". It's structured, consistent, and in my case it even came out without introducing new bugs.
Here's a screenshot from a session:
Cursor: A complex prompt, implemented in minutes.
I'm really excited about the AI features and can hardly wait to see what the future brings.
November 21st, 2025, authored by Bert
AI Chat Integration
We've integrated an AI chat feature (experimental) into Tektur CCMS, making it easy to get assistance while working with your content.
See how it was developed in the video below.
November 5th, 2025
Tektur CCMS Demo Version Available
A demo version of Tektur CCMS is now available for download. Installation is incredibly simple: You only need Docker Desktop, and the system is up and running in less than 5 minutes. The demo version can be downloaded at https://www.stylesheet-entwicklung.de/publiziere/#/tektur/download.
(Note: The video is not in 16:9 format, which causes some playback issues. I will create a new version of the video soon.)
September 7th, 2025
CSS Redesign with Claude Code
From now on, I'll be using AI tools to support my coding - and it's a game changer. Productivity easily increases by a factor of five. For example, I recently asked an AI assistant to redesign the CSS for this project, and within just ten minutes it delivered a complete dark theme that worked almost perfectly right out of the box. Here are a few screenshots:
Tektur: Dark theme of the HTML5 Help
Tektur: Dark theme of the Marketing Homepage.
Older blog post without AI-assisted writing are below. Enjoy :-]
January 20th, 2025
Tektur CCMS Marketing Homepage
Just finished creating a fancy homepage (german speaking) for Tektur CCMS using a VueJS3 Single Page App that talks to the Tektur CCMS server via a REST API.
I used to run a dedicated server (with different OS and versions over the time) at Hosteurope for a couple of years. Due to the rising prices I quit the contract and bought a gaming PC instead.
It's so much fun to see the XSLT transformation speed at my local Tektur CCMS server! But unfortunately there is no public test server any more.
So I put a couple of videos on Youtube (german language) just to document all the features that have been included during the last two years.
Admin interface and REST API:
Review & Approval Workflow
CCMS functions, output formats & M$ Word import
Finally here is a diagram about the general architecture. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any queries about Tektur CCMS. I will put development on hold for a while.
As you can see the application is fully containerized. There are currently six containes that share data in two volumes. There is a XML DB and a NoSQL DB backend and a fancy VueJS3 frontend that loads all data via the Tektur CCMS REST API
November 30th, 2022
Long time no see!
Good news: Tektur CCMS is still under development. I am currently working on some tricky and unique features, e.g.
send an XPATH query via a REST API to a NoSQL database (MongoDB). This is actually impossible,
since XPath should work with an XML database only.
With enough passion, courage and imagination it can be done quite easily. Steps including but no limited to:
Decompose the XPath Query into tokens: Element names, attribute names and (PCDATA) values. You may apply some rules, like:
"A word-like string followed by an opening round bracket always marks a function call which can be removed".
Sort the tokens according to some heuristics, like "A hex value enclosed by quotes is likely to be a unique identifier
and should be treated with priority".
Create a performant regex query using the tokens. May be do not use all tokens if the reqex is clear.
Search for: <elemname, @attributename, >PCDATA, ="attributevalue".
Query the NoSQL database with the regex in order to retrieve some candidates for our original query. But there is a another pitfall because NoSQL does not support Regex.
Run an XSLT stylesheet on each candidate with the original XPath Query.
Return the list of extracted XML fragments to the REST API caller.
After some tests this procedure seems to be quite fast (if the heuristic is smart enough).
October 12th, 2019
Comment navigation and attachments
Improved the discussion functionality. There is a paper clip icon now...
Tektur: Add attachments to comments
You can open the Attachments dialog by clicking on that paper clip...
Tektur: Add and view attachments
An approver may change the state of a comment and disable attachment upload...
Tektur: Reject a comment
You need to reason about the rejection...
Tektur: Provide a rejection message
A reader may look at the comments...
Tektur: Comments on the Reader's view
When hovering over a comment the discussion panel will show up - pin it with a click.
Also, showing arrows for jumping from one comment to the next going through the entire publication.
Tektur: Attachments in Reader's view
August 18th, 2019
Frontpage
Added a simple frontpage to the system that lists all publications on the server.
Also, latest changes and latest comments are listed.
Tektur: Frontpage with publications, changes and comments
July 14th, 2019
Simple HTML format
My friend George has come up with the idea that it would be really nice if you could
just download a set of plain
HTML pages which make up the book. Put this package on any webserver or even on
the filesystem and voila, your
work is published.
As far as I know none of the popular CMS systems, blog engines or wikis can do this.
See how it works:
Tektur: Download Simple HTML Format
There's a new button on the Reader's view. Click it to download a ZIP containing HTML
pages, images and an old school HTML frameset.
Tektur: Contents of a Simple HTML ZIP package
The design looks rather simple but it can be easily customised to meet your individual
needs. The content is semantically well-tagged and
there is just one CSS file.
Tektur: Simple HTML Format featuring a HTML4 framest
I used a HTML frameset for separating the TOC from the content. While this may not
be the most elegant solution, it is at least widespread.
May 26th, 2019
Markdown Importer
Just finished the Markdown Importer. It works either on a document- / chapter-level but
also on a paragraph-level. Some screenshots:
Tektur: Import of Markdown content on a paragraph-level
Tektur: Import of Markdown content on a document- / chapter-level
The implementation is pretty straight-forward and summed up below:
Flatten nested chapters (h3 to h6) in order to reflect the DITA topic vs. section hierachy.
Pick up result and import.
I tried it on the test file
of John Gruber (who is one of the inventors of the Markdown syntax).
The result looks quite nice in the editor:
Tektur: Imported Markdown test document
So why do we need a Markdown Importer here? It happens to be that most programmers
use Markdown for documenting their projects
for example on GitHub.. With this feature, Tektur
allows software developers to contribute to a "master" document that may be
assembled in a "post-authoring" workflow step, ready to be published
as a PDF or any other format ...
April 19th, 2019
?? Fulltext-Search
Implemented full-text search! Normally I would use Apache Solr as a search engine
but this time I gave the text index
of MongoDB a chance in order to keep the stack easy and clean. The whole application
is written in JavaScript/NodeJS and XSLT
with MongoDB as database and Apache FOP as XSL-FO formatter. That's all. I am
quite happy with this architectural decision:
Tektur: Full-text search over all topics of some books
I am thinking about including more options like searching over certain elements. It
does already work for source code snippets:
Tektur: Full-text search over all source code snippets
March 31st, 2019
Lazy-Tags & minor HTML improvments
Inroducing "Lazy-Tags" ... At some point we are just to lazy to extend the DITA model,
add some new icons to the editor toolbar,
customize the XSLT templates and CSS if we just want to include some simple
markup tags that will only have some technical functionality and
no semantic meaning. This is why I invented lazy-tags:
Tektur: "Lazy-tags" get parsed and marked green while editing
There are also some minor improvements for the HTML format:
A button on the header brings up all accepted comments.
Commented paragraphs are marked.
Chapters that contain comments are marked in the TOC.
A panel with comments slides up.
Jump to the next and previous pages with the arrow buttons.
Download all DITA topics in a ZIP.
Tektur: Display of comments in the HTML
March 3rd, 2019
Finalized PDF
I have been working on the PDF layout. Finally I updated to the latest Apache FOP
version
which makes things a lot easier. This is how a bookmark tree looks in a browser:
Tektur: PDF Bookmarks used as a TOC naviagtion
This feature is quite hidden in Acrobat DC - for some reason - and the bookmark view
doesn't open on initial
startup. You have to navigate to a number of dialogs:
Acrobat DC: Open the bookmark view (german)
The bookmarks act as a TOC:
Tektur: Bookmark view in Acrobat DC
Hazard statements are now page-wide featuring new icons:
Tektur: Hazard statement rendered in a PDF
All auto-generated registers come with a description
and hyper-link back to the related piece of text:
Tektur: Display of the Glossary page in the Appendix of the PDF
Tektur: Display of the List of Figures in the Appendix of the PDF
Tektur: Display of the List of References in the Appendix of the PDF
Tektur: Display of the Index in the Appendix of the PDF
Note that these registers are not numbered in the TOC in order to distinguish
them from other chapters:
Tektur: A TOC page of the PDF
Last but not least: Syntax-highlighting of source code - very important to me since
I have started writing a book about XSLT and XQuery:
Tektur: PDF - Syntax-Highlighting of Source Code
As the book project progresses, I will ask my designer-friend if she is willing to
contribute some logos
(page header and cover page) and illustrations in order to make the whole thing
look more professional :-]
December 27th, 2018
HTML Format & XSLT-Buch
Long time no see! Just added HTML format:
Tektur: Create HTML format
There is still some work to do:
Tektur: Early HTML5 format
I decided to write a book about XSLT - just for testing purposes:
So here's the complete workflow of the reviewing features.
Let's start with a basic scenario:
Alice is the editor. She will write a short
topic about the installation process of software XYZ.
she will put the topic on the review-lists of Bob and Eve.
Bob is an engineer. He will review the topic of Alice.
While doing that he will find a typo and a content error.
He will put a comment next to the affected text paragraphs.
Eve is the supervisor. She will check Bob's comments.
She will accept the content error but reject the typo.
Let's see this in action:
Alice selectes the topic called "Installation" and starts editing...
She saves her changes and goes back to her editor-list. She opens the reviewer-dialog...
She assigns Bob and Eve a reviewer and approver role...
Also, she puts the topic into state "In review". She observes that the workflow of this
topic has changed to "review", when looking at the
editor-list...
Bob gets notified by email and examines his reviewer-list...
Amongst some topics from Ernie and Bert he also checks out the topic from
Alice. He goes straight into that topic and submits some comments...
Back in the reviewer-list he notices that there are three open comments...
Eve gets notified by email and also checks
her review-list. Amongst some topics from Winston and Jules she observes
a topic from Alice. She goes right into that topic...
Having the appover role, she may reject or accept the comments. She is
okay with most of Bob's comments but does not agree on the typo...
She submits a rejection message...
The rejection message is appended to Bob's comment. Bob gets notified by email...
Back in the review-list she checks that the statistic panel is updated...
Alice decides to include the feedback from Bob and Alice. She puts the topic back
into state "editing". The topic is also removed from the review-list of Bob and Eve...
When opening the editor, Alice observes that there is a new button "show comments"...
When clicking on that button, she will only see the comments that were accepted
by Eve. She will not see the comment that was rejected...
After commiting her changes and corrections, she sets the state of each comment to
"done". The
comment panel will fade out. Also note that the comments cannot be changed in the
editor view...
Bob who is the owner of the comments may delete them in the next
reviewing step, that will be initiated by Alice, who is the owner
of this topic...
May 25th, 2018
Reject Discussions
Having the Approver role you can reject comments together with a rejection
message. The Reviewer will be notified by eMail about the changes.
Tektur: Reviewer adds a comment
Tektur: Approver rejects the comment
Tektur: Approvers submits a rejection message
Tektur: Rejection message is attached to the comment
April 19th, 2018
Manage Discussions
You can add and remove comments to/from any piece of text using an inline editor widget.
This is how it looks like:
Tektur: Add comments to the topic element
Tektur: Add comments to the task element
Tektur: Add comments to the map element
March 10th, 2018
Reviewer-Listing & Review-Editor
Finished with the reviewer listing. There are columns for the assignment type { approve
| review } and for the number of comments.
All columns are filterable and sortable:
Tektur: Just one row in the reviewer listing
When you click on the topic title you will get to the reviewer screen:
Tektur: Reviewing view of a topic
Every piece of text is decorated with a little speech bubble icon. You can put comments
by clicking on such a bubble.
This is where the story ends for now. To be continued in April :-]
February 25th, 2018
Review & Approval
Started working on the workflow features. The first version will be quite simple.
For now, there is a speech bubble button that lets you configure
approval and review roles for each topic, task and map:
Tektur: Show the approval and review dialog
There is also a new entry in the top menu called "reviewer". If you click it,
then you will get to your list of items that you were assigned to by your
peer editors. The configuration is located in a popup dialog:
Tektur: Assign approvers and reviewers
A Tektur document can reside in two different states:
Editing: Approval and review is blocked for all users.
In Review: The document is in read-only mode, but:
Reviewers can put change requests on text paragraphs.
Approvers may accept or reject these change requests together with an explanatory
statement.
If a change request has been rejected then a notification will be sent to the reviewer.
Also, deadline reminder mails will be sent.
February 24th, 2018
RTF (Word) Import / Export
Added a new output format. It's RTF that you can open and edit with your Micro$oft
Word Processor.
Tektur: Creation of the RTF format
RTF will not be cached and created every time you click the button.
I put another tab on the plain-text importer dialog (also note the fullscreen button)
in order
to import RTF content from Word or from a website:
Tektur: Inport of Word content
Paragraphs and simple list structures are currently supported. All other content will
be merged into a plain-text block. This is how the input of my test case looks like
(I copied this piece of text into the popup dialog):
Tektur: Copy and Paste of Word content
Conversion to DITA is done on-the-fly with the following result:
Tektur: Copied Word into the content editor
There is also a configurable widget for inserting special characters:
Tektur: Insert a special character
BTW: I was not able to put a decent filter icon into the input boxes
of the lists because JSGrid does not provide this functionality.
Thus, I was searching in the UTF-8 character set and found a magnifying lense! This
is how it looks in my source code editor:
The result looks like this:
Tektur: Magnifying lenses in input boxes
Does not perfectly fit together with the other icons but at least there is an icon :-]
February 8th, 2018
Versioning
View a previous version of a topic, task or map. Just click the "More" button located
on the action bar:
Tektur: Show more actions
The popup dialog lists all previous versions together with a timestamp:
Tektur: List of previous versions
Show a previous version in read-only mode:
Tektur: HTML preview of a DITA map
When you click on the button Set as Current then the current version of the document
will be replaced. You will be prompted for confirmation:
Tektur: Confirmation dialog when restoring a previous version
This is how read-only mode of a topic/task looks like:
Tektur: Read-only task
January 13th, 2018
Function Follows Form
Yes, I know! It should be exactly the other way round... But I was just too lazy
to think about the GUI concept again.
Currently there is a main panel with a listing or an editor on it.
It depends on the state of the application. There is also a popup dialog which
shows up in the middle of the screen.
Reworked this dialog in order to improve the UX. See how it looked before:
Tektur: Previous version of the FCM dialog
That is okay for testing... But in production, the user input must be validated -
even better: The user should only be able
to select reasonable values.
This dialog is definitely to small. I worked around this by attaching a tooltip on
the right side. This is how it looks now:
Tektur: Current version of the FCM dialog
Also, stumbled across some cool new HTML5 features:
1.) You can add a description to each topic, task or map in the properties section.
Tektur: Metadata description of a topic.
It will be displayed as a tooltip when hovering over the topics listing
Tektur: Metadata description in a tooltip.
2.) When clicking on a breadcrumb the DITA Help box is updated with a link
to the corressponding documentation on the DITA homepage.
Tektur: Link to the DITA homepage.
3.) Changing a topic reference in the map view lets you also select topics from
a different project. Note that the text input field at the top of the dialog box can
be used
to filter the result list.
Tektur: Select topics from another project.
A topic that is linked from another project will be marked as "external".
Tektur: External topic reference.
4.) Links may reference topics from
another project. Note that the link text will be updated with title changes
without a refresh.
Tektur: Link text to topics from another project.
5.) There is a "more info" button next to each list entry.
Tektur: More info button.
When you click on this button you will see a little dialog, that displays two fields:
The internal ID of this topic, task or map (important when debugging).
The "Where-used-list" with all cross-references to this topic.
Tektur: Where-used-list.
November 9th, 2017
Same procedure as every year
The task is probably the technical editor's most beloved element. Check out the specification on the DITA homepage.
Also note that the PDF layout is work-in-progress (rendered by an "old" version of
Apache FOP, v1.0)
Tektur: Not a real-world example of a DITA task.
Looks also good in the editing view:
More of a real-world example would look like this:
Tektur: Real-world example of a DITA task.
Editing view:
Tektur: Editor view of the real-world task.
September 21st, 2017
Major Redesign
Brand new design and styles...
Tektur: New design of the splash screen
Tektur: Show list actions on mouse over
Tektur: New icons in the TOC
Tektur: Redesign of the editor toolbar
August 28th, 2017
Toolbar Icons
The gfx department is working hard on some custom icons for the toolbar of the editor
panel...
Tektur: Custom icons for the editor panel
June 18th, 2017
Icons and other gfx
Just ordered some new custom icons and gfx from a designer-friend. Also spent some
money on quality assurance and testing. The editor part is 80% completed; entirely
written in JavaScript/NodeJS. Thanks to NW.js it runs both on a website and as a desktop application. Here's a screenshot animation
of most recent work:
Tektur: Screenshot animation of most recent work
April 22nd, 2017
Tektur Peer-2-Peer Real-Time XML CMS
Actually I was thinking about an easy way to distribute the NodeJS binary and MongoDB
together with the Tektur application code.
Finally I came across a different approach to the whole thing. Why not bundle the
browser control, the NodeJS binary and the database together as a desktop application
with server features?
This is pretty easy using NW.js. It comes with a NodeJS binary and Chromium browser control, that runs on Windows and Mac.
Replaced the MongoDB with TingoDB and voila here is Tektur running in a Desktop window - but still being a server application,
that listens on port 8080 for other browsers to connect.
Tektur: Running in a Desktop window
Developing this thought further consequently leads to a new architectural idea:
Tektur: Peers at work
Tektur will be a server-less peer-to-peer system.
Each user brings her own disk space and computing power, making the system very scalable
and secure.
Topics that were created by user XYZ will stay on the computer of XYZ. Well, that's
the idea, long term.
April 16th, 2017
Maps Editor
Started implementing the DITA maps editor. I am reusing a control which I wrote for
the UWE project some years ago� basically some custom Javascript that sits on top
of the well crafted jQuery TreeTable plugin.
The user can arrange the DITA map by drag 'n drop / buttons for inserting, deleting
and moving the topics.
A click on the topic/map titles shows a popup dialog with further options. See some
screenshots below:
Tektur: Select the map title
Tektur: Edit DITA elements title, navtitle, shortdesc and keywords
While editing the documentation site using Plone as CMS I realized
once more that the integrated editor of Tektur is far better than TinyMCE, CKEditor
and
the like.
For example It is a nightmare to reorder complex list items with TinyMCE
using copy and paste. You'll end up editing HTML tags in the source view. This is
definitely
not user friendly...
February 18th, 2017
Table Input
Tektur features CALS tables, which are more complex than HTML tables.
Only a subset of CALS attributes can be rendered in the editor. Other
properties have effect only in the PDF output, such as @frame:
Tektur: DITA @frame attribute
Also @pgwide that allows for setting the table page-wide or column-wide.
Tektur: DITA @pgwide attribute
CALS tables may suffer from an erroneous markup constellation,
due to their complex nature.
Therefore we check each user input. If the input breaks the table geometry,
the current action is automatically undone, leaving the table in a consistent state.
The "tablefixer algorithm", which I designed a while ago
(scroll down and see my post at August 17th, 2014) was reused in order to
implement this feature.
Following some screenshots:
Tektur: Insert a new table
Insert a table on the next allowed position by pressing the table button
in the toolbar. (Note that, according to the DITA content model,
there are several restrictions when inserting a table)
Tektur: New table dialog
Edit important properties in the "Insert Table" dialog...
Tektur: Table context menu
A right-click on any place in the table area will bring up the standard context menu
with a special entry "<table> Popup". A click on this entry will show the
"Edit Table" dialog.
Tektur: "Edit Table" dialog
Expert users may also use the standard properties dialog in order to modify
special CALS attributes:
Tektur: Standard properties dialog
For example one could set a custom frame option for the PDF output:
Tektur: Set the DITA @frame attribute
Tektur: Set value on @frame
and set a desription for this table:
Tektur: Add a description to a table
Tektur: Type text in the field table description
That's all: Tables are feature-complete, yeah :-]
Oh wait: There is something left to do. I'd like to set the width of each table cell
using drag'n drop. Currently I am experimenting with a JS library colResizable which works just fine,
but still having some issues with copy 'n paste and spanned columns...
February 4th, 2017
The Awesome User Graph
Rights and roles are fully configurable. Custom roles may be:
An Author is the owner of a book and inital editor.
Co-Authors will be invited by Authors to write certain chapters or sections.
Internal-Reviewers will work in the same department or company. They start commenting on text paragraphs
and other elements of a certain topic in a "reviewing phase".
Internal-Approvers will check the book, single chapters or topics. They will accept or reject the book
for external review.
External-Reviewers probabely work at the customer's site. They will add change requests and/or corrections.
External-Approvers: They will approve the book or specification if it fullfills the customer's expectations.
Quality-Managers check the book if it is okay with the quality standards of the company.
Compliance-Managers: They check the book if it is okay with legal and ethical standards.
Responsible-Managers: Well, these people are the bosses.
When users of Tektur work on different books with different roles it can get rather
complex. Fortunately we can visualize
relationships as a graph:
Tektur: The User Graphs shows all roles of a certain user
This fancy graph (which is not a real-world example!) has been implemented using the
fine Springy.js library (A force directed graph layout algorithm in JavaScript).
If you click on a username the graph will be expanded with the user's role information.
Basically the configuration of the system, which can be edited using a
HTML5 form, is transformed to XML data, that is transformed to JSON data, which finally
acts as the input for the Springy library. So easy!
January 29th, 2017
Synchronized Profile Data with Django Admin
Django comes with an excellent Admin interface out-of-the-box. Today I have been synchronizing
the registration of new users:
Tektur: Register yourself as a new user.
The Profile dialog may be checked and changed at any time:
Tektur: Select the Profile popup dialog from the top main menu.
The administrators of Tektur may change further options in the Django Admin interface:
Tektur: Change global user roles in the Django admin interface.
The NodeJS view will be updated with the changes in real-time. Also note the link
"User Graph":
Tektur: Check global user roles in the Profile popup.
In addition to the global roles which apply to every book in the system, the user
may also be assigned
to specific topics or maps. This complex relationship will be implemented using a
graph (Coming soon).
January 14th, 2017
Topic Listing is Feature-Complete
Just finished work on the topics listing. I am giving you a short idea about the "business
plan".
The first release of Tektur, which is scheduled by the end of 2018, will be a "teaser".
It will feature
the basic functionality:
Different groups can create and collaboratively edit a DITA document.
Rights/roles/actions can be assigned on a fine-grained level.
Other groups can be invited to work as Co-Authors.
All information objects can be reviewed, approved and rejected by responsible groups.
Important output formats such as PDF can be created on-the-fly.
Comments, notifications and messages will be distributed in real-time.
The system will be put online with a large set of demo documents. I will invite some
people in
the techdoc industry for beta-testing...
Here are some screenshots of most recent work:
Tektur: Layout options for each document.
Major design decision: The Layouter dialog is now connected to each element in the
listing. Thus each element may be
styled individually.
Tektur: Topic Listing with Extended Filter Options + Document Actions.
Extensive search and filter options are located in the table header. The list will
be updated in milliseconds. Filter options are persisted while
changing the HTML5 single-page views. Document actions are as follows:
Show more information.
Export element in DITA format.
Show Layouter dialog.
Show element in Reviewer.
Generate PDF output.
Generate RTF (=Word) output.
Delete element.
Tektur: More Topic Properties on Info Action click
The popup dialog for the more info box will also show all DITA maps where this topic
is used. The user can click on a link and will be
redirected to the corresponding map.
January 4th, 2017
Working with the XML editor
Tektur: Editor user interface details
December 26th, 2016
Topic metadata
Added some slidable metadata input fields to the editor view (Note: The datepicker
widget is implemented using Pickaday JS library).
Tektur: The due date of this topic can be changed
December 4th, 2016
The topics listing
Started working on the topics listing. I have been using the fast jsGrid library.
Tektur: The topics listing
As you can see, there is a lot more space in the column "actions".
The first action is "Export the topic as a DITA ZIP file", indicated by the disk icon.
Other actions may be:
Show in HTML Preview
Show in Reviewer Application
Generate Print PDF
Generate HTML5 Page-Flip Book
[...]
Go to Properties Page (with more options)
Most of these actions have already been implemented for the UWE project.
December 3rd, 2016
XML related concepts of Tektur
Modularization
Generalization
Validities
Versioning
Intelligent References
Automatic Typesetting
Modularization is one of the key principles of a XML CMS.
Whereas ordinary CMS systems let the user organize the content into
pages, sections, etc. and do not support the reuse of
content on a fine-grained level,
Tektur will automatically split up the content into small
pieces of information. This allows for maximum reuse.
Also the underlying XML DITA information model allows
for semantic tagging of text paragraphs, procedures, tables,
figures, and many other customizable semantical elements,
that can be searched for, filtered out, linked to and exported.
Generalization is a DITA concept that allows for processing
of Tektur content in other DITA system and vice versa.
Even if there is customized and taylored data, generalization
will add another level of abstraction to the transferred data,
making it equal - without information loss.
Validities is a techdoc specific requirement. It boils down to a
fine-grained conditional processing of the data. The conditions
can be set by the editor and are loosely coupled to the data.
Those conditions can be changed at runtime,
making conditional processing a flexible approach to
increasing product diversification, without changing the actual data
but only the configuration of the system.
Versioning is a common feature to all CMS systems. But with
a XML CMS it is possible to mark changes on a fine grained level.
That is
all changed words, all deleted words and all new words are marked.
Changes can easily be related to users and to versions.
These changes can be listed, filtered out or processed further. For example it is
easy to mark TOC entries when there is a change somewhere in a subchapter.
References to other text parts on different pages is a common feature in print publications
and in electronic formats.
This functionality is commonly known as hyperlinking.
With a XML CMS hyperlinks can target all elements,
e.g. paragraphs, figures, tables, chapters, ... and can be put on any place
in the content.
The text of the hyperlink can dynamically be generated by the system,
together with the correct page number, properly set for different languages and
with different boilerplate text.
But there is a difficulty with this approach. The correct
version of the target text part must be determined. As you can guess
this is tricky since the
modularization and versioning features of Tektur.
Automatic Typesetting is an indispensable feature in
the field of technical documentation. Custom layout is slow,
expensive and often stuck to the data. We could transform
HTML input into a PDF. But this is not sufficient.
Here is a simple example:
A list is declared with HTML using <ul>
and <li> elements.
if you want to have a title to the list, you probabely want to put a
paragraph before the list, like so:
<p>This is the list title</p>
<ul>
<li>First list item</li>
<li>This is the seocnd list item</li>
</ul>
Having this structure, there is now way of telling the PDF renderer to keep the title
of the list together with the list on the same page. A page break would certainly
look ugly.
One could say keep a preceding paragraph together with the list.
But what if this list does not contain a title? What if the preceding paragraph
spans half of the page?
With XML you could declare:
<ul>
<title>This is the list title</title>
<li>First list item</li>
<li>This is the seocnd list item</li>
</ul>
Making this structure semantically belong together. Now you can tell the
PDF renderer: Keep all <ul> elements together or split on <li> elements,
which is a much better automatic typesetting.
November 26th, 2016
Short notes on the workflow logic
The workflow logic of Tektur will be rather simple.
It is just XML data that holds information on who will have the
permission to perform certain actions on the information objects of the system,
which are maps, topics, tasks, images, comments, messages, notifications,
and queues.
Actions may be: view, add, edit, remove, comment, accept, reject,
open, postpone, finish, access and sendTo.
Users can be added to groups, e.g. authors, reviewers, approvers, managers...
Each group will have its own
xml configuration and its own list of work queues.
Transition of workflow steps will be done by switching the
active work queue for group XYZ and sending information objects to queues.
Here is a sketch:
Tektur: Workflow Logic
The XML configuration will internally be mapped to JSON that is
stored in the MongoDB. Since this configuration has to be looked
up very often, that is each time an information object model is queried for,
but will be updated only here and then, this approach should be sufficient.
There won't be too much object orientation in the code since OO
tends to slow down systems, especially in scripting languages...
November 19th, 2016
More about the XML editor
Free toolbar icons are hard to find. Looking forward to receiving better icons from
a designer friend soon.
Tektur: Integrated DITA XML Editor
November 13th, 2016
Confirm dialogs
Confirm dialogs are so important. Easy to overlook when designing the application.
Maybe hard
to implement later on. Here's a screenshot of the confirm dialog in the editor view.
Tektur: Confirm dialog in the (early) editor view
November 6th, 2016
Topics Importer
I have been working on the Topics Importer.
There will be two options when importing data:
Fast bulk upload of data using a commandline
tool that connects via HTTP.
Individual users can upload single DITA topics or maps
directly via the web interface.
For now, there is only the second option available.
The corresponding popup dialog can be selected from the top menu.
Tektur: Drag 'n Drop of topics to be imported
A ZIP to be imported must contain one XML file (the DITA topic)
and may also contain multiple resource files.
Zips can be uploaded by dragging them onto the marked area.
(Implemented with the excellent
Dropzone JS library)
Once uploaded the server will check for files corrupted or invalid.
It will present the user with a list.
The user may correct the import by dragging files onto the upload area again
or may cancel the upload.
When clicking the import button the content of valid ZIPs is populated
to the database.
Here's a sketch of this process:
Tektur: GUI Importer control flow
Note that all connected browsers will be updated with the changes in real-time using
Websockets and NodeJS.
September 13th, 2016
More Mockups
Making mockups for popups...
TekturCMS: Popup Dialog Mockups
There is definitely some need for more colors.
How about "Raw Sienne" and "Aquamarine" for the highlighting stuff?
TekturCMS: "Raw Sienna" Color Scheme
TekturCMS: "Aquamarine" Color Scheme
September 6th, 2016
Tektur Design
Since I liked the paper-and-pencil style of the ARC-Space game (see below) I will
be reusing this design -
together with the Courier New font family - for a simple and clean "Typewriter" look-and-feel.
Just started with two dialogs:
TekturCMS: Layouter Dialog 1
TekturCMS: Layouter Dialog 2
September 5th, 2016
Tektur Tech Stack
Here's a first sketch of the architecture. Django will stay but only for the administrative
backend and
XSLT transformations (Django and Python evidentially do a good job in both areas).
TekturCMS: Architecture
August 16th, 2016
First JSON response
Basic concept: DITA topics are stored in a MongDB. Every topic is implemented by an
item in a NoSQL collection.
Every user maintains his own list of items that will be merged with other lists if
users collaborate.
This is the JSON response for adding a test-topic:
I will add more useful data to this skeleton within the next few weeks... developing
the system bottom-up.
August 13th, 2016
Tektur KickOff
During the last 3 years I have learnt a lot about what's important and what's not
for a new kid in the XML CMS town. Requirements:
Web-based
Easy-to-use
DITA data model
Handle thousands of topics
Integrated word-like editor
Put focus on electronic formats (HTML5, ePub, etc)
High-qualitiy print publication
Flexible workflow system
Configurable layout engine
Real-time collaboration
Software-as-a-service
Fast single-page HTML5 GUI
More or less all of these points have already been evaluated. Now it's time to put
all
the pieces together.
Some parts of the UWE stack will stay whereas others will be dropped:
Django Webframework will be replaced by NodeJS.
MySQL database will be replaced by MongoDB, because of the tree-like nature of XML
data in general and DITA topics more specifically.
Search Engine will be Solr/Lucene.
CKEditor will be dropped for a homebrew solution.
Actually I feel a bit sad, because there won't be any line of Python any more in the
code. Python is still my favourite
programming language, but obviously it's much better to build the stack upon one specific
technology and not having a
mixture of programming languages.
Since this will be my leisure time project, do not expect any production ready results
before 2020.
