Newbie's therapy

[Antonios Christofides <A.Christofides@itia.ntua.gr>]

When I first tried docbook, back in 1999, I remember I had a very hard
time with it and quit. At that time I had RedHat 6.2. A couple of weeks
ago I thought I should try it again. Debian 3.0. "apt-get install
docbook-xml docbook-doc docbook-dsssl docbook-xsl-stylesheets
docbook-utils jade openjade xalan ..." Everything installs with an ease
that Microsoft would envy, but nothing works in the end. Three days of
total frustration.

It is terrible for a newbie to have to read for endless hours in order
to decide whether they should first try jade, openjade, xalan, saxon,
etc. etc., and whether they should use dsssl, xsl, or css, and when they
attempt any of those to run into really serious problems. So far I've
only had some success with xalan and xsl.

Could you please give me a hint on which tools you'd recommend, and a
couple of guidelines to get me going?  Thanks! And I promise I'll flood
you with more specific questions afterwards :-)