Re: [docbook-apps] Tools for generating Docbook programlisting fragments?

["Jay Bryant" <jay@bryantcs.com>]

> Do anyone know of a library for generating DocBook programlisting 
> fragments from
> source code listings marked up with special comments.
> The purpose is to generate the Docbook source and program language 
> source,
> from a common specification. I've tested filtering a xml file  containing 
> a programlisting
> DocBook element through a custom stylesheet, but so far I've been  unable 
> to avoid
> getting extra whitespace, when doing it this way.

Hi, Tommy,

One of my clients is doing this against a code base that consists of C, C++, 
Java, and Visual Basic (they program in C++ and Java but expose APIs in all 
four languages). They have a program that scans their source code 
directories, scoops up the specially marked code listings (everything from 
one-line listings to entire executables), and dumps it all into an XML 
(DocBook) file. Then the writers create references to the file full of 
samples to scoop up the bits that go into about 40 different books.

I can't share the code (they wrote their own proprietary solution), but I 
could write such a program in an afternoon (including testing). I helped 
them with the XML/XSLT part of setting up their DocBook system, so I know 
the issue well and know that this solution works.

If you're generating source code listings with XSLT, by the way, try setting 
the output mode to text and being very careful with the line breaks and 
start-of-line spacing. You can still save the resulting files as XML, but 
you'll get better control over the white space if you create the output as 
text.

HTH

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services