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What are DocBook documents doing in the Samba Distribution ?
-----------------------------------------------------------
By David Bannon, D.Bannon@latrobe.edu.au November, 2000
----------------------------------------------------------
We are planning to convert some or all (?) of the samba docs to sgml
DocBook to make them easier to maintain and produce a nicer looking
product.
This short note (strange isn’t it how it always starts out as a short note
and becomes a long one ?) will explain very briefly how and why we are
doing this.
The format
----------
If you are new to sgml, regard an sgml file as 'source code'. You don't
read it directly, use it to create other formats (like the txt and html
included in ../txt and ../html).
Docbook is a particular sgml style, particularly suited to producing
technical manuals. In the two documents I have produced so far I have used
DocBook 4.1, it seems that products like RedHat Linux is still include only
version 3.1, the differences are minor. The Linux Documentation Project is
using a modified version of 3.1 but are really geared up to make multi
paged documents, something we want to avoid for logistic reasons.
The Output
----------
Formatted html or xml is easily produced from a DocBook document, however I
had difficulty making a txt file directly ! It appears that the people who
make DocBook did not imagine anyone wanting to make plain text from a
DocBook document. At least one set of sgml tools appears to have decided
that the easiest way is to make the html and then convert that, this works
fine.
I have not had the need to make man pages from a DocBook document yet,
anyone want to send me some pointers ??
To make file handling and distribution easy I have opted for a single file
or page per document. In the Samba 2.2 distribution I made an html and a
txt version of each sgml file and placed that in the appropriate directory
under ~/doc.
The Tools
---------
Any sgml document needs to be referred to a suitable style sheet
(describing syntax) and other sheets that tell the translating programmes
how to do the translations. The list of necessary 'include’ files is a
bit messy but once installed is pretty easy.
On one of my RedHat 6.2 systems I installed the following:
* sgml-common (as an rpm)
* docbook (as an rpm)
* stylesheets (as an rpm)
* jade (as an rpm)
* Docbook 4.1 from http://docbook.org
* DSSSL 157 from http://nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/
If you would be happy using DocBook 3.1 (and why not ?) then stop after the
four rpms. If you want to use 4.1 and the current DSSSL then you will need
a bit of manual editing of the catalog files.
There are several downloadable descriptions of the DocBook syntax at the
web sites mentioned above. Note that a lot of the docs only talk about
version 3.1 with 4.1 as an add-on.
In either case you will need to include in the html/docbook.dsl and most
likely a couple of 'defines’ to achieve a suitable output. I made a
local dsl file that I called html.dsl that looks like this :
<!DOCTYPE style-sheet PUBLIC "-//James Clark//DTD DSSSL Style Sheet//EN" [
<!ENTITY dbstyle SYSTEM "/usr/lib/sgml/dsssl-157/docbook/html/docbook.dsl"
CDATA DSSSL>
]>
<style-sheet>
<style-specification use="docbook">
<style-specification-body>
(define nochunks #t) ;; Dont make multiple pages
(define rootchunk #t) ;; Do make a 'root' page
(define %use-id-as-filename% #t) ;; Use book id as filename
(define %html-ext% ".html") ;; give it a proper html extension
</style-specification-body>
</style-specification>
<external-specification id="docbook" document="dbstyle">
</style-sheet>
Note the top block that refers to where the dsssl-157 style sheets are
installed, if you don’t put them there make sure you edit the file.
To use this stylesheet, have it in your working directory along with your
sgml files. Jade does the actual conversion to html, call it like this :
jade -t sgml -d html.dsl stuff.sgml
To create the text version run the html through lynx :
Lynx -dump -nolist stuff.html > stuff.txt
These instructions are crude by might help someone get going. Please feel
free to contact me if you have any questions or if you can correct any one
of the many mistakes I must have made above.
David
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