Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: How to process a DocBook file on Debian? (fwd)

[Michael Schuerig <schuerig@acm.org>]

On Thursday 19 December 2002 00:11, Tom Peters wrote:
> Does anyone know a specific HOWTO deal with DocBook/XML on Debian
> Linux? The Oasis and docbook.org have plenty on how to write a
> docbook file, but are scarce on how to process it.  There are plenty
> of references saying "use OpenJade" or whatever, but it is a
> nightmare of stuff that can't be found or can't be validated.  I need
> something more specific.  I want the thing printed, through RTF or
> PDF, using whatever stylesheets that work out of the Debian box.
> Note: I used to have it working with DocBook/SGMl about 2 years ago,
> but some of the tools have disappeared since so my makefile doesn't
> work anymore. So:
> - what tools do I need in what order?
> - what envars should I set and what should they contain?
> - what are the stylesheets and how do I get the tools to find them?
> 	Thanx,

I'm using docbook-website with xsltproc to build my web site.

$xsltproc stylesheet.xsl -nonet -catalogs dbfile.xml > dbfile.html

Debian keeps a centralized catalog, xsltproc finds it if the appropriate 
env variable is set:
SGML_CATALOG_FILES=/etc/sgml/catalog
I set it in /etc/environment, but you may as well do it in the startup 
file of your shell (then you also need to export it).

Recommended packages: xsltproc, docbook-xml, docbook-xsl, docbook-doc, 
docbook-website, docbook-defguide

AFAIK, there's no direct and easy way to get a printable representation 
of a docbook file. You can use xsl-stylesheets to generate FO output 
and process that in turn with fop (package lib-fop-java). 
Alternatively, there's the package docbook-utils that contains 
converters from docbook to pdf, ps, rtf and various other formats. 
docbook-utils uses dsssl-stylesheets, though, so I can't say if this is 
of help to you. I have tried neither and can't say if/how they work.

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig                  If at first you don't succeed...
mailto:schuerig@acm.org           try, try again.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/   --Jerome Morrow, "Gattaca"