Re: [docbook-apps] Tools to make DocBook easier

[Warren Young <wyml@etr-usa.com>]

On Sep 14, 2015, at 4:04 PM, Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote:
> 
> What tools are there to make working with DocBook easier?  I wrote a lint-like proofreading tool

There’s already xmllint, which if given a DocBook DTD, will validate the well-formedness of your document, not just in the XML sense, but also in that, for example, <para> cannot appear within <city>.

Some of the DocBook-aware text editors will do this on the fly, such as oXygen.

> called “igor"

Its -n option is bogus for DocBook.  Two spaces after a period is a relic of fixed-width typography, from the days of typewriters.  I’m doing it here because I expect you’re reading it in a fixed-width font.  If your DocBook files are writing out to fixed-width forms, then *maybe* it has a use, but I’d bet most DocBook input ends up as HTML or PDF output, which typically use proportional fonts.

Its -o and -t options are reinventing the xmllint wheel, probably poorly.  I’m not trying to be mean, but your tests probably aren’t as rigorous as a DTD, which is already installed on the system, as is xmllint, in all likelihood.  Maybe it should just call out to xmllint for you?

Other than that, it looks like a nice addition to the toolkit.

Any chance of at least preformatting the man page as index.html for the project page?  It’s a bit annoying that I had to know “nroff -man < igor.1 | less” in order to RTFM without installing your software.


Yours,

Another Warren :)