NAME
db2x_manxml - Make man pages from Man-XML
SYNOPSIS
db2x_manxml [options] [xml-document]
DESCRIPTION
db2x_manxml converts a Man-XML document into one or more man pages.
They are written in the current directory.
If xml-document is not given, then the document to convert is read from
standard input.
OPTIONS
--encoding=encoding
Select the character encoding used for the output files. The
available encodings are those of iconv(1). The default encoding
is us-ascii.
The XML source may contain characters that are not representable
in the encoding that you select; in this case the program will
bomb out during processing, and you should choose another
encoding. (This is guaranteed not to happen with any Unicode
encoding such as UTF-8, but unfortunately not everyone is able
to process Unicode texts.)
If you are using GNU’s version of iconv(1), you can affix
//TRANSLIT to the end of the encoding name to attempt
transliterations of any unconvertible characters in the output.
Beware, however, that the really inconvertible characters will
be turned into another of those damned question marks. (Aren’t
you sick of this?)
The suffix //TRANSLIT applied to a Unicode encoding — in
particular, utf-8//TRANSLIT — means that the output files are to
remain in Unicode, but markup-level character translations using
utf8trans are still to be done. So in most cases, an English-
language document, converted using --encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT
will actually end up as a US-ASCII document, but any
untranslatable characters will remain as UTF-8 without any
warning whatsoever. (Note: strictly speaking this is not
“transliteration”.) This method of conversion is a compromise
over strict --encoding=us-ascii processing, which aborts if any
untranslatable characters are encountered.
Note that man pages and Texinfo documents in non-ASCII encodings
(including UTF-8) may not be portable to older (non-
internationalized) systems, which is why the default value for
this option is us-ascii.
To suppress any automatic character mapping or encoding
conversion whatsoever, pass the option --encoding=utf-8.
--list-files
Write a list of all the output files to standard output, in
addition to normal processing.
--output-dir=dir
Specify the directory where the output files are placed. The
default is the current working directory.
This option is ignored if the output is to be written to
standard output (triggered by the option --to-stdout).
--to-stdout
Write the output to standard output instead of to individual
files.
If this option is used even when there are supposed to be
multiple output documents, then everything is concatenated to
standard output. But beware that most other programs will not
accept this concatenated output.
This option is incompatible with --list-files, obviously.
--help Show brief usage information and exit.
--version
Show version and exit.
Some man pages may be referenced under two or more names, instead of
just one. For example, strcpy(3) and strncpy(3) often point to the same
man page which describes the two functions together. Choose one of the
following options to select how such man pages are to be generated:
--symlinks
For each of all the alternate names for a man page, erect
symbolic links to the file that contains the real man page
content.
--solinks
Generate stub pages (using .so roff requests) for the alternate
names, pointing them to the real man page content.
--no-links
Do not make any alternative names available. The man page can
only be referenced under its principal name.
This program uses certain other programs for its operation. If they
are not in their default installed locations, then use the following
options to set their location:
--utf8trans-program=path, --utf8trans-map=charmap
Use the character map charmap with the utf8trans(1) program,
included with docbook2X, found under path.
--iconv-program=path
The location of the iconv(1) program, used for encoding
conversions.
NOTES
The man pages produced should be compatible with most troff
implementations and other tools that process man pages. Some
backwards-compatible groff(1) extensions are used to make the output
look nicer.
AUTHOR
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
SEE ALSO
The docbook2X manual (in Texinfo or HTML format) fully describes how to
convert DocBook to man pages and Texinfo.
Up-to-date information about this program can be found at the docbook2X
Web site 〈http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/〉 .
The input to db2x_manxml is defined by the XML DTD present at
dtd/Man-XML in the docbook2X distribution.