Creating public libraries and documents

The process covered here is used when you want to create new documents and/or libraries that you intend to eventually publish online. To make this process easier, in addition to Local and Public locations, you can create Development locations.

A Development location is a combination of both a Local and a Public location. In a Development location, the current version of the libraries and/or documents are located in a directory on the local machine which makes the content editable. All previous versions are handled in the same way they are handled for a Public location . The URL where the content will eventually be published is used in any references to libraries in a Development location. This avoids problems that would exist if you published a document or library containing references to files on your local machine.

Creating a Development location

A Development location can contain libraries, documents, or both. In this example, we will assume for simplicity that there will only be libraries in the location. The procedure is the same if there are documents or both in the location.

To create a Development location, open the Location List (Edit > Location list... in the main menu) and select the Development button under Add location: on the right of the dialog. To create a development location, you need to enter three things, the name of the location in the Name: text box. In the URL: text box, enter the URL where you intend to publish the libraries. This URL is the online location that will eventually be the home of the libraries after they are published. Note that this URL doesn't need to exist in order to create and configure a Development location. Finally, select a directory that will contain the libraries until they are published.

Note that any references to these libraries that are created in your documents or in other libraries will refer to the online location. As a result, these document and libraries will be usable by others once you publish the libraries to this online location. References to the most recent version of these libraries will be redirected to the libraries in the local directory.

Adding libraries

This is exactly the same as for a local location. Highlight the location in the Location List dialog, right click and select Add new library from the context menu.

Deleting a library

When you delete a library, the file is deleted from the local directory, but isn't deleted from the published version(s) of the location. If the deleted library was already published, the library will show up in the Edit References dialog if one of the previous versions of the location is selected.

Publishing the location

The steps to publish the documents and libraries in a local location are covered in Publishing Libraries and Documents in a Location.
Each time the location is published, a zip file is created for the new version of the location. The zip file will contain only the files that are selected as part of the publication process. By default, all files in the development directory are included.

Converting a local location to one that is published

If you create a local location and put one or more libraries in it, then decide that you want to publish these libraries, there is a way this can be accomplished. The steps are:

  1. Delete the existing Local location for these libraries (this doesn't delete the files).
  2. Create a new Development location, entering the URL where you intend to publish the libraries in the URL: text box and the existing directory containing the libraries in the Directory: text box.

Note that any references to these libraries that have already been created will now be missing because the Local location has been deleted. These references will need to be deleted and recreated to refer to the online location using the Edit References dialog.