Re: [docbook] making macros

[Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>]

Steven Cogorno wrote:
> You can't do that.  There's no facility for creating "macros" that group 
> elements together.  You need to include the entire element structure.  

One thing one can do is can design a new format that you translate into
docbook.  But then the input format isn't docbook.  However, if you want
"macros" you can define your own tags, and then write a little xslt
script to translate that to standard docbook.

This translation could be combined with regular dcobook processing,
by adding extra rules to the standard docbook xslt scripts for handling
the new tags.

An alternative: The GNU texinfo format is a lot less verbose than
docbook, and you can translate texinfo into docbook.  (Last year
I made numerous fixes to the makeinfo program for its option to
generate docbook instead of the default info format.)  However,
texinfo is a completely different format from docbook - it's not
even XML.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/