Conceptual problem formatting <preface> material

[Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com>]

Hi,

I am trying to reproduce the structure of existing manuals written in Framemaker, in 2 new manuals written using Docbook and I'm having a little trouble working out how one is supposed to do radical formatting of front matter.

Our manuals are <book>s.

I have a custom title page constructed via a titlepage template, which just has the front cover. So far so (relatively) easy...

But then I have some pages with different page numbering (eg i .. vi) that include a slightly custom formatted TOC, an untitled copyright section, and then some titled (but un-numbered) sections describing Typographical Conventions etc. (One of the existing Frame manuals is accessible at <http://www.isode.com/Documentation/SWADMINT.pdf> in case I'm not explaining this well.)

The copyright section feels like it should come from the book info, but the remaining stuff feels like preface material.

What's the best approach for arranging these things? I'm starting to look at overriding the "book" template from fo/division.xsl, but have a sneaking suspicion that I really should be doing this all in the titlepage template.

Or is there another way?

I did look at Bob's otherwise excellent book, but didn't really get a good feeling for the best approach here.

Cheers,

Chris