[Boost-docs] Problem building documentation from quickbbook to html using xslt under Windows

Subject: [Boost-docs] Problem building documentation from quickbbook to html using xslt under Windows
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-11-17 22:39:12

I have run into a problem building documentation locally for my VMD 
library under Windows. My actual boost source is in a directory of my e: 
drive, which I share between multiple Windows ( Vista, 7, 8.1 ), but 
when I build I direct the output to a directory on my c: drive using 
--build-dir=c:\some_directory in the bjam command line.

In the process of building my source from quickbook to boostbook to 
docbook to HTML an XML file is generated which has the path to my VMD 
library's reference file as one of the sections of my documentation. The 
line in vmd.docbook is:

<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" 
href="E%3a/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml"/>

The xsltproc is called with the full path to vmd.docbook to transform 
this XML file:

xslt-xsltproc.windows 
C:\Programming\VersionControl\modular-boost\build\boost\bin.v2\libs\vmd\doc\gcc-mingw-5.1\debug\vmd.docbook

The result, however, is an xslt error because xslt does not recognize 
the '%3a' as a colon ( : ) and so I get:

warning: failed to load external entity 
"file:///C:/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/vmd/doc/gcc-mingw-5.1/debug/E%3A/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml"

I then further get:

file:///C:/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/vmd/doc/gcc-mingw-5.1/debug/vmd.xml:7284: 
element include: XInclude error : could not load 
file:///C:/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/vmd/doc/gcc-mingw-5.1/debug/E%3A/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml, 
and no fallback was found

and the VMD reference is never included in the final HTML documentation.

Is this a problem with xslt on Windows ? If not is the documentation 
tools which transform quickbook to boostbook to docbook to HTML at fault 
? Is there a workaround for my problem ? In my documentation jamfile I 
am of course not specifying any drive related paths.