customizing the pdf layout... doesn't work

[Rock Lobster <email@christian-gleinser.de>]

Hello,

I've tried to use DocBook now for about a month or so, and while the writing
of a DocBook document is very cool in my opinion, everything else is a real
pain :/

I tried to customize the pdf LAYOUT, but I just can't get along. My main
problem is that I just can't find a GOOD documentation. Okay, there are many
free books available, but they are more about DocBook itself, but nowhere is
exactly explained how I can change the layout.

In the forums, someone explained that the params in the params-directory
can't be used directly but they can be compiled to other
docbook-transformation-files. But I don't know how I could achieve that, and
there are just so many files in the DocBook-directory and I can't find any
entry point or something.
Then I tried to customize a params.xsl file directly, and it worked, but
there are other problems now. For example, I tried to display a sidebar. The
default sidebar layout is NOT what is my imagination of a sidebar ;) so I
tried to put it on the side by setting sidebar.floating.mode (or whatever
it's called) to "left", "start", "outside" and some other options. It
disappears completely. If I put it back to "non", it will reappear, but
again, it's not a sidebar anymore.

Another thing I don't understand is, for example, in Oxygen you can specify
some parameters, and those parameters seem to be scanned out from the
DocBook directory, but I can't find EVERY parameter - e.g. there's no
normal.para.spacing in that list, so I have to change it manually in the
file.

Is there any COMPLETE text on how to customize parameters, and what's the
secret of those files and how are they organized? I can't believe everyone's
using the standard layout (especially not with that so-called sidebar :), so
I assume there must be some documentation about that.

I hope someone's able to help me a little bit on this subject :)
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