too confused to make progress

["Mark Duling" <mark.duling@biola.edu>]

docbook-apps-digest-help@lists.oasis-open.org on Thursday, January 11,
2007 at 1:32 PM -0800 wrote:
>Looking for any help/directions - sort of Docbook for Dummies thing
>
>I'm using Fedora Core 6 and I've got sgml & xml dtd's
>3.0/3.1/4.0/4.1/4.2/4.3/4.4 and can't figure out which (if any) to use.
>
>I have been using these commands to generate the html/tex files...
>
>docbook2html -d docbook-utils.dsl#html make_web2.xml
>docbook2pdf -d docbook-utils.dsl#print make_web2.xml
>
>My objective is to have a set of xml files that I can generate both html
>& pdf documents for our non-profit agency. I have been going over Norm
>Walsh's DocBook info and Bob Stayton's Docbook XSL but I think I need
>more basic than that.
>
>So far, I have made the best progress with Eric Raymond's
>De-Mystification but that is obviously outdated.
>
>I have also looked at 'Writing Documentation using Docbook'
>
>Is there something more basic than this for beginners?

Craig,

I am also a Docbook newbie but when I finally set down to do it recently I
discovered that I could use the DocBook editor XML Mind (xxe) and learn
the tool pretty fast and accomplish what I needed, then export to html. 
And I'm glad I did that because I learned I needed to understand CSS more
than Docbook for my immediate purpose, though I didn't know it.  The free
version of xxe won't export to PDF but you can use utilities for that. 
Reading the detailed Docbook information is fine, but reading it too soon
isn't always as helpful as it could be.  I started using the "learning by
doing approach" advocated here. 
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/xml/news/dontlearn_0701.html#les3 
I have plenty of technical reading I need to do, but now that I know more
about Docbook and what I can do with it I'll be more comfortable doing it.

Mark