DocBook (Was Re: [oclug] Topics for upcoming meetings)

[Dan York]

On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 08:06:32AM -0500, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 11:04:14AM -0500, Sandy Harris wrote:
> > Dan York wrote:
> > 
> > Stylesheet problems were discussed on the Linux Documentation Project list
> > sometime around the middle of last year. Some of the LDP folk had given up,
> > temporarily at least, on the standard DocBook-to-PDF or -to-Postscript tools.
> > They didn't consider those ready for prime time, so they were just going
> > to HTML with standard tools, then using hthmldoc (www.easysw.com) to get
> > from the HTML to PDF and Postscript.
> 
>     Well, I switched to DocBook from LaTeX, where dvipdfm was my best friend
> for producing pdfs from dvi files. I'm using that now with DocBook and
> jadetex, and I've found that jadetex uses hyperref to put links in on xref
> tags, and when you convert that with dvipdfm, you get a hyperlinked pdf. Very,
> very cool. 

Having just survived several weeks of tweaking DSSSL files, trying out
different tools... and doing a ton of other things... I can tell you
*all about* the good and bad news of generating PDF files from DocBook!

The good news is... I got it all to work.  Using:

  DSSSL stylesheets 1.62 (Norman Walsh)
     - http://www.nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/index.html
  openjade 1.3 (http://openjade.sourceforge.net/)
     - with the openjade patches from http://indev.insu.com/openjade/
  JadeTex 3.3 (http://www.tug.org/applications/jadetex/)
     - as a result of some of what I was doing, Sebastian Rahtz just
       released JadeTex 3.4
  DocBook 4.1 (http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/index.html)
  sgml2x - (http://sgml2x.sourceforge.net/)

sgml2x is a front-end to openjade and jadetex that did the best job
of building the end PDF file.  The only problem is that there seemed
to be no way that it would support a DSSSL customization layer in a 
single file.... so I had to point it at a directory where I put a
copy of Norm's 1.62 stylesheets... and then hacked those directly.
I put it all under CVS so that I can get a diff off the base so that
at some point I *can* build a single DSSSL customization layer.

FYI, I rolled an RPM of the DocBook 4.1 SGML DTD... it's at:
http://www.lodestar2.com/software/docbook/ if it helps at all.

The results of all this is at http://www.e-smith.org/docs/manual/

That's the scoop,
Dan
-- 
Dan York, Director of Training        dyork at e-smith.com
Ph: +1-613-751-4401  Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739 
e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
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