Re: [docbook-apps] AW: [SPAM] [docbook] "xmlto pdf" command fails in TeX/LaTeX step on debian system.

[Thomas Schraitle <tom_schr@web.de>]

Hi,

On Mittwoch, 28. Februar 2007, Daniel Leidert wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> As
> mentioned in the mail cited in the footnote, dblatex(.sf.net) might be
> a replacement for passivetex. But it seems, you are a Sarge user. I'm
> not sure, what I should suggest. docbook-xsl(you can safely use the
> package from Sid under Sarge) and fop should work for creating PDFs.
> But I don't know, how this fits your LaTeX environment.

XSL-FO is definitly easier than LaTeX.

Let me add something from my work with DocBOok and LaTeX:
Around 2003/2004 I wrote a book[1] about the DocBook system (DTD, 
stylesheets, etc.) and used XSLT and LaTeX for this task. To transform my 
DocBook files into LaTeX, I created XSLT stylesheets and formatted the 
result to get PDF and PostScript. If I remember correctly, at that time 
the stylesheets for db2latex were not mature enough and db2latex had just 
started. So far, so good.

The process itself was very nice, but the problem was LaTeX. I needed a 
special layout given by the publisher so it was too complicated to adapt 
dblatex/db2latex to meet my needs. Another problem was screen, all the 
special characters that had to be escaped, callouts, emphasis, etc. 
*shudder* To get a good layout you had to use the right package with the 
right command or environment and hoped you used nothing special. 
Sometimes you found a good package but unfortunatly it lacked some 
special needed feature. At least that were my experiences.

I don't say, LaTeX is bad. No doubt, LaTeX is a wonderful piece of 
typographical software. You can have a nice marriage between the two. 
However, it takes careful babysitting to get all the tools behave 
correctly AND you have to pay a very high marriage portion... ;) 


Just my 2 cents,
Tom

-----
[1] http://www.millin.de/linux_docbook_xmlbuch.html

-- 
Thomas Schraitle