CiTEC > DocZilla > Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

General

Q: What Is DocZilla?

A: DocZilla is a Mozilla-based browser that understands documents written in SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and renders the documents with CSS (Cascading Style Sheet).

Q: What is DocZilla designed for?

A: DocZilla Browser is a software application designed to avoid costly and time-consuming conversion of SGML documents into a proprietary format. DocZilla Browser can directly view unprocessed, full SGML documents along with XML and HTML, and act as an intelligent client to the end-users.

Q: What is the difference between Mozilla and DocZilla?

A: DocZilla adds extra value to Mozilla. As for structured document data, DocZilla supports full SGML and XML loading and validation, whereas Mozilla only supports very basic XML. Mozilla supports only HTML links and simple XLinks: DocZilla additionally supports ID/IDREF and HyTime clinks with nameloc, treeloc, queryloc (URL) locators and extended XLinks. DocZilla comes with a professional search and indexing module.

Q: There's already Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Mozilla -- why do you think people would adopt DocZilla instead?

A: Anyone can certainly feel free to use DocZilla as a plain web browser, but its features are more targetted for professional level use in academic and industrial environments where traditional web browsers don't fit as naturally as it'd often be desired. DocZilla is enabling technology and if you're working with or building SGML or XML based technology solutions, DocZilla will be your only true solution.

Q: You said "enabling technology": is there more to DocZilla than just the browser?

A: Certainly! The strenght of DocZilla lies in its RAD (Rapid Application Development) framework courtesy of the Mozilla Project. The most common customer cases involve either turning DocZilla into a customized viewer/documentation client, or a standalone SGML/XML application specializing in some sort of processing or editing of SGML/XML data. Delivered DocZilla applications range from simple CD browsers to a graphical editor tool of specialized XML tables.

Often we're requested for a quote on some customization work on the browser. We've surprised many by being able to apply our DocZilla technology to new problems with such a pace that our customers could actually afford a new DocZilla application of their own, instead of a small addition in the existing browser!

Licensing and support issues

Q: Is it freeware, shareware, etc. ?

A:As before, the final DocZilla Browser will be free for personal, non-commercial use. Commercial and site licenses for DocZilla are supplied by demand. The only available version of DocZilla today is 2.7pre1 whose license is available on the download pages, and must be agreed to in order to finish the installation procedure.

Q: Does DocZilla have customer support for users using non-commercial version?

A: DocZilla is free for non-commercial use, but we are not able to commit to help everybody with their technical questions. Please refer to the DocZilla Forum and see if we, or other users can help you out. If you are not satisfied with this setup, please contact our sales team for ordering better support.

Q: Are sources available?

A: Sources for Mozilla as a basis of DocZilla are available at http://www.mozilla.org/. Sources for proprietary DocZilla components are not.

Multidoc Pro and DocZilla

Q: What is the difference between Multidoc Pro and DocZilla?

A: DocZilla is a replacement product for Multidoc Pro. This means that DocZilla is designed to be as easy to use as Multidoc Pro is. On top of it DocZilla has for example following enhancements : it is portable to different platforms (currently ported to Windows and Linux), it has scripting support (JavaScript), it has more standardized style sheet support (Cascading Style Sheets), it has better interface for browsing over network (Internet, intranets), it supports HTML, etc.

Q: How do we migrate from Multidoc Pro to DocZilla?

A: The only difference within the documents, that has been browsed by Multidoc Pro, is the style sheets. Multidoc Pro uses application specific SGML- based style sheets whereas DocZilla uses standard CSS. CiTEC has provided an external application at download pages that roughly converts Multidoc Pro style sheets to CSS. Additionally you need to change references to style sheets on documents. For example if your documentation uses ENTITYRC file to attach style sheets, you just need to change filenames pointing to correct CSS ones only in ENTITYRC.

Developmental issues

Q: Is there DocZilla for operating system X?

A: By so far there has not been any major demand for other operating systems than Windows and Linux. Therefore the priorities has been put on those platforms. If there is enough demand, it would be a simple matter to port DocZilla to other platforms, thanks to Mozilla's portability layer. Mac OS X is a prominent candidate platform for future ports.

However, there have been few questions for ports to various Unix flavors, e.g. Solaris and *BSD. We're considering whether it'd be feasible to maintain a set of unofficial ports to these platforms fornow. Other than that, we can focus our full development efforts at only few platforms.

Q: Looks good, but we still need some features to make it perfect for our environment...

A: Contact our sales team. As soon as we get to know the specialities of Your documentation environment, we can start helping you!

Last modified: Tue Aug 23 09:13:20 EEST 2005 by webmaster@citec.fi