Re: [docbook] DocBook Fink report

[Brad Tombaugh <Brad@Tombaugh.org>]

Rich, you've discovered that DocBook can have a bit of a steep  
learning curve...  Its worth working through, in my opinion, and  
you'll get there shortly.

There have never been too much Mac OS X specific material  
available...  The earliest item that I had found was a packaged  
installer from Project: Omega in France.  "Mezis has gathered several  
XML-related tools out there in order to build a comprehensive DocBook  
processing package, initially for the team at Project:Omega. The  
result of this work is the DocBook-X package" which you can find at:

http://www.projectomega.org/subcat.php?lg=en&php=products_docbook

They offer a tutorial as well, but I've not looked at it in some  
time, so I can't comment on how useful it may be for you.  As I  
recall it was a good overview of the document creation cycle,  
although it may be a bit out of date as well.

A more recent resource is Steve Ball's Tcl front-end for XSLT  
processing, found at:

http://www.explain.com.au/oss/libxml2xslt.html

Steve's site also offers Mac OS X binaries of libxml and libxslt,  
eliminating the need for Fink.

--------
Brad Tombaugh
mailto:Brad@Tombaugh.org
http://www.Tombaugh.org

On Oct 6, 2005, at 2:29 AM, Rich Morin wrote:

> At 12:44 PM +0900 10/6/05, Michael Smith wrote:
>
>> Caveat: I would guess that page is probably not up to date. But
>> perhaps you can volunteer to update it after you're done getting
>> your kit set up. :-)
>>
>>>    psgml           - couldn't find it!!!
>>>
>
> Assuming that I'm successful, and that we can finesse the little
> "immmutable page" notice at the bottom of the page, I'd be quite
> happy to do so.
>
>> Bad place to start.
>>
>> The best place to start now is with Bob Stayton's "DocBook XSL:
>> The Complete Guide" -
>>
>>   http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/index.html
>>
>> That is up to date and will tell you pretty much everything you
>> need to know.
>>
>> ... If you are starting fresh with DocBook, you should use the
>> XSL-based toolchain, following the steps in Bob's book.
>>
>
> Let me get this straight.  I should ignore a document that tells
> me that I can process a docbook file into (say) HTML with a single
> command.  Instead, I should fish my way through 20+ pages of dense
> installation and configuration information in Bob's book, trying to
> figure out which instructions might be applicable to the programs
> that I (supposedly) just installed.  I begin to see the problem.
>
> Well, there are some things I can determine:
>
>   % which pdftex
>   /sw/bin/pdftex
>   % which xsltproc
>   /sw/bin/xsltproc
>
> I look into installing xmlto, but it requires a different getopt
> than OSX has.  I try installing the suggested getopt, but it does
> not build on OSX.  The problem becomes a bit clearer.
>
> I then look into "Docbook XSL", trying to find a "Hello World",
> such as the one in the "Crash Course".  No such luck; instead, I
> find a long-winded chapter on "XML catalogs".  Moan.
>
> The "Crash Course" may be out of date, but it HAS THE RIGHT IDEA.
> A newby needs an easy way to get things set up, determine that the
> needed commands are all present, and get some plausible results.
> THEN, s/he can be told that there are better (though more complex)
> ways to do things.
>
> So, what I'd like is a short example file and some equally short
> commands to turn it into HTML and PDF.  Can someone supply these,
> so that I can put them into the wiki?
>
> -r
> -- 
> email: rdm@cfcl.com; phone: +1 650-873-7841
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