RE: [docbook-apps] too confused to make progress

["Wright, Barton" <Barton.Wright@iona.com>]

Craig,

Looking up the docbook2html and docbook2pdf commands that you're trying
to use, I see that they are part of a Jade Wrapper family of commands
under Linux. The Jade processor only supports DocBook SGML files. Most
DocBook users today are using DocBook XML.  

For a bird's eye overview of DocBook, you can start with the Wikipedia
article [1], and then browse some of the links on the DocBook Wiki [2].
There are some Quick Start guides listed on the DocBookMarks page [3],
but I can't vouch for their quality or accuracy.

For Windows users, most of the battle is getting the tools set up. As a
Fedora user, you are already far ahead of that curve, since the tools
are included with most Linux distributions. 

Use the latest version of the DocBook XML DTD that your tools support.
Only DocBook versions 4.1.2 and 4.5 were formally declared OASIS
standards, so if you're starting from scratch, use DocBook 4.5. There is
a 5.0 version under development, but if you want to get up and running
the fastest, stay with the 4.x series for now.

Although there are many Quick Start guides out there, the ones I read
always presumed a great deal of prerequisite knowledge. I would suggest
that there are no DocBook shortcuts, and that the best approach is to go
through Bob Stayton's book [4], chapter by chapter, line by line. By
about chapter 3 or 4, you will know enough to produce HTML and PDF
output. After that, the rest of the book is about the customization that
you will want to use eventually. 

Learning to use DocBook well is a bit of a climb, but the views on the
way up are well worth the effort.

Good luck!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook

[2] http://wiki.docbook.org

[3] http://linux.duke.edu/~mark/docbookmarks/

[4] http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/index.html


-----Original Message-----
From: Craig White [mailto:craig@tobyhouse.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 6:17 PM
To: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] too confused to make progress

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 11:04 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> Looking for any help/directions - sort of Docbook for Dummies thing
> 
> I'm using Fedora Core 6 and I've got sgml & xml dtd's
> 3.0/3.1/4.0/4.1/4.2/4.3/4.4 and can't figure out which (if any) to
use.
> 
> I have been using these commands to generate the html/tex files...
> 
> docbook2html -d docbook-utils.dsl#html make_web2.xml docbook2pdf -d 
> docbook-utils.dsl#print make_web2.xml
> 
> My objective is to have a set of xml files that I can generate both 
> html & pdf documents for our non-profit agency. I have been going over

> Norm Walsh's DocBook info and Bob Stayton's Docbook XSL but I think I 
> need more basic than that.
> 
> So far, I have made the best progress with Eric Raymond's 
> De-Mystification but that is obviously outdated.
> 
> I have also looked at 'Writing Documentation using Docbook'
> 
> Is there something more basic than this for beginners?
----
is this the wrong list for newbie questions?

Craig


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-help@lists.oasis-open.org