Is Project Aon...

[HuntingWolf]

known by any other name? Like the program behind it, what is it called? I kinda want to write my own internet addition of a book I'm writin', and was wondering how I can set it up, along the same lines as PA.

[Thomas Wolmer]

Hm, what do you mean? There is no specific software behind Project Aon, though we use certain technologies when publishing the books, maintaining the website etc. These have changed through the years.

You want to create your own online (or offline, but still HTML-based) gamebook using the same tech as Project Aon? Yes, that is posssible - but not necessarily easy! The short version is that a book is stored as an XML file, using a format as specified by our own DTD. Using our own XSL stylesheet and an XSLT processor (could theoretically be any, but we use Xalan-J), the XML file is transformed into the set of XHTML files that you can download/browse. Some Perl scripts make life easier for us when turning the XML files into XHTML books. To run those, a Unix-like environment is needed - myself I have at different times been using Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, and Cygwin on Windows (the Project Aon server runs Linux).

[HuntingWolf]

I see. Since I dunno the first thing about how to run those progs, I guess I'll just stick to WordPerfect 12....