making macros

[Chuck Robey <chuckr@chuckr.org>]

I am a programmer who hasn't any real experience in writing 
dcobook-formatted documents.  I have extensive experience in writing 
groff docs encoded with the 'mm' macro set.  I purchased the O'Reilly 
docbook book, but seeing as it was really an exhaustive listing of all 
of the tags supplied by docbook, with no real suggestions as to normal 
use (just as a dictionary, while supplying all the definitions, shows no 
indications on who to construct s sentence) I got little useful from it.

I am a programmer, and I read enough about xml, xsl, and xslt to be able 
to program in it.  What I want to get is one of two  items, and really, 
either will do, although you might be able to guess I would like the 
fist a bit better:

1) much like the 'mm; macro set allows me to make use of groff, I want a 
list of docbook macros, and enoiugh of the description of what each one 
actually does, so I (as a docbook newbie) can figure out what it really 
means enoiugh to program a macro processor for it, in either xslt, or 
maybe using something like python.

2)  A set of documemts (one simply will not do) that rae fairly general 
in usage, and differing in size, so that I coudl figure out the usage 
myself.  Telling me to use something like the set of Gnome docs won;t do 
either, because from what I have been given to understand, the Gnome 
docs aren't general purpose enough for my purposes.  I would really like 
about a half dozen different docs, of differing sizes and types.  maybe 
a couple of memos, at least two different ones with at least several 
lists in each, and at least one large doc with chapters in it.

This last needs to be general in use, so I could get suggestions from it.

I sure would be overjoyed to find out that such a list of macro 
candidates already existed.  Whatever happnes, I would really be 
disappointed if all I got here was a bunch of people tellling me that I 
could use their favorite editor.  I don't want to use their editor.

Thanks!