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Re: Rendering DocBook




[email protected] said:
> Ya know what, I don't think I fully understand. :) All the html HOWTOs
> at www.linuxdoc.org look the same to me (ToC as the front page, each
> page linked to), and completely different from what the default html
> rendering with sgmltools is (with 'sgmltools -b html foobar.sgml').

Most HOWTO's are written in the "LinuxDoc" document type, which is processed 
with SGMLtools v1.0.x. This software uses something called mapping tables to 
do a sort of search&replace from SGML tags to the output format, with a bit of 
Perl code to massage everything into something reasonable. The bulk of the 
HOWTO's on the website have been produced with this technique.

New HOWTO's can/should be written in the "DocBook" document type, which is 
processed with any of a number of tools, although they all rely on the same 
engine: OpenJade. This is a validating SGML parser with a built-in DSSSL 
processor, and runs the SGML input through the DSSSL stylesheet, producing 
flow objects which are then interpreted by a OpenJade back-end to produce the 
output format.

Now, this DSSSL writing business is sort of tricky, and there's almost no-one 
on the planet who can actually do it. Luckily, a net.hero called Norm Walsh 
maintains a full kit of stylesheets for DocBook, and he has built them so you 
can easily extend and adapt them. However, Norm hasn't got a lot of interest 
in the LDP, so his idea of how HTML output should look like is a bit different 
from how the "old" HOWTO's look.

In SGMLtools v2.0 (and subsequently SGMLtools-Lite v3.0), I have made a small 
attempt to get closer:

sgmltools -b html -s howtoh ....

gets you to the "built-in" HOWTO/HTML stylesheet. Let me now how you like it, 
and while you're at it: sgmltools -b pdf -s howtop gives you my version of 
HOWTO's for printing (note that the PDF backend only appears in v3.0).

So, now you know just as much as I do :-))



-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <[email protected]>
                            http://www.sgmltools.org   <[email protected]>
pub 1024D/E0989E8B 2000-04-14 Cees de Groot <[email protected]> fingerprint = 
0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B


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