Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: DocBook and TeX/LaTeX

[Michel Goossens <Michel.Goossens@cern.ch>]

> - an approach to map DocBook XML elements to LaTeX code might be 
>   "xmltex" from David Carlisle dating back to 02/2000.
>   The infrastructure to map *any* XML element/attribute names to 
>   TeX/LaTeX code is already setup and all what has to be done is
>   to create a map file.
>   I don't know whether any work has already been done to create 
>   such a map file and will look/search for more information.
>   "xmltex" should should be available for any up-to-date TeX installation.
>   o http://www.dcarlisle.demon.co.uk/xmltex/
>   o ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/macros/xmltex/base/manual.html
Although possible in principle, it is only really usable for "linear"
maps, i.e. one element to one element, not depending (too much) on
attributes, encapsulation (an item inside the different kind of lists
should be handled differently, section elements at the i-th level should
map to \section, \subsection, etc., depending on the level, etc.). Moreover 
most of the elements in DocBook do not have an easy incarnation in LaTeX,
so that somebody will have to first define a class or package file defining
what <link>, <phrase>, <guimenu>, <keycode>, <prompt>, <productnumber>, 
just to name a few, should look like, and in a way that it is not too
difficult to customise if somebody wants to adapt the definitions to the
conventions used by their institution or company.

Together with Sebastian Rahtz, back in 2000 I wrote an article for the
TUG Conference in Oxford in August 2000, published in TUGBoat 21, 222-234,
September 2000, Michel Goossens and Sebastian Rahtz, 
"PassiveTeX: from XML to PDF", also available as a preprint at the URL
http://home.cern.ch/goossens/goossensrahtz.ps.gz),
where we looked at ways of translating XML DocBook (and TEI) via XSL-FO
and passivetex/xmltex to PDF using Norm Walsh' XSLT stylesheets. 

Work in progress are the db2latex XSLT stylesheets, on sourgeforge, which
translate DocBook Markup to LaTeX, including some parts of MathML. The
author, Ramon Casellas, however, is busy finishing his PhD, but he
promises to get back to db2latex soon after Easter 2002. I sympathise
with a db to ltx approach, although I am not sure that in the long run TeX
(or its successor Omega) will not just interpret XML markup as an
alternative input format (as xmltex already does, but at a very low
TeX level).
 > - there is ongoing work in the "ConTeXt" community to create a similar
>   solution like "xmltex" for "ConTeXt". Very recent beta versions of 
>   "ConTeXt" are able to read and parse any XML document and map XML
>   element names to ConText code. 
>   Hans Hagen, the creator of ConTeXt, is sure to have a working
>   solution for DocBook/ConTeXt in the very near future.
>   I will contact Simon Pepping from the Dutch TeX Users Group, who 
>   is more or less coordinating this work to get more information.
>   o http://www.ntg.nl/context
Context is nice for as long as you do not have to learn it, i.e., I do not
think that one wants to master yet another language different from LaTeX
if one has to customise the look of the running headers, for instance. 

mg