[ZooLib-dev] WooHoo! DocBook works

[Michael D. C. <cra...@go...>]

Well I finally found a way to make docbook work for me without having an 
aneurism.  Now I can start doing meaningful work on writing a programmers manual 
for ZooLib, and hopefully make it much more approachable for all of you.

It doesn't come with Slackware, which is the Linux I normally use, and building 
it from scratch and getting all the dtd's and catalogs and everything installed 
is just beyond my capacity.

But I installed Debian PowerPC on my Macintosh, and happily one can select 
DocBook as an install option.  When one selects the initial packages for 
installation there is an option for SGML stuff.


With a little RTFMing I was able to get psgml working well to type up my first 
docbook document in Emacs.  I could validate it OK.  But I had trouble using 
db2html to format my test document as HTML.  I kept getting lots of cryptic errors.

I got help from the doc...@li... mailing list and made a 
small modification to db2html (it's a shell script) that made things work for me.

As it stands, db2html will format DocBook SGML documents, which I think is the 
official standard for what DocBook means.  But DocBook XML is in developmet, and 
is working well, although I don't think it has been ratified as a standard yet. 
  There are a lot of advantages to preparing documents in XML rather than the 
more general SGML - basically since its easier to parse there is a lot of free 
software available for manipulating XML documents but not a whole lot for SGML.

The following patch, when applied to a copy of /usr/bin/db2html will make it 
process DocBook XML documents.  Keep both versions around and you can process 
both kinds.  What would be a little better is to detect the file extension and 
do it the right way in just one script:

--- db2html     Tue Nov  6 22:25:15 2001
+++ mydb2html   Tue Nov  6 22:17:03 2001
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
  DB_STYLESHEET=/usr/lib/sgml/stylesheet/dsssl/docbook/cygnus/cygnus-both.dsl
  HTML_STYLESHEET=/usr/lib/sgml/stylesheet/css/cygnus/docbook.css
  ADMON_GRAPHICS=/usr/lib/sgml/stylesheet/dsssl/docbook/nwalsh/images/*.gif
+XMLDCL=/usr/lib/sgml/sgml/xml.dcl

  output=db2html-dir
  TMPDIR=DBTOHTML_OUTPUT_DIR$$
@@ -52,10 +53,10 @@
  SAVE_PWD=`pwd`
  if [ $1 = `basename $1` ]; then
    echo "working on ../$1"
-  (cd $TMPDIR; jade -c $CATALOG -t sgml -ihtml -d ${DB_STYLESHEET}\#html ../$1;
  cd $SAVE_PWD)
+  (cd $TMPDIR; jade -c $CATALOG -t xml -ihtml -d ${DB_STYLESHEET}\#html ${XMLDC
L} ../$1; cd $SAVE_PWD)
  else
    echo "working on $1"
-  (cd $TMPDIR; jade -c $CATALOG -t sgml -ihtml -d ${DB_STYLESHEET}\#html $1; cd
  $SAVE_PWD)
+  (cd $TMPDIR; jade -c $CATALOG -t xml -ihtml -d ${DB_STYLESHEET}\#html ${XMLDC
L} $1; cd $SAVE_PWD)
  fi

  if [ $# -eq 1 ]


Mike
-- 
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
cra...@go...

   Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.

     "I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak
      out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared,
      be in doubt, but don't be gagged."
      -- John J. Chapman, "Make a Bonfire of Your Reputations"
         http://www.goingware.com/reputation/