NAME
db2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML
SYNOPSIS
db2x_texixml [options]... [xml-document]
DESCRIPTION
db2x_texixml converts a Texi-XML document into one or more Texinfo
documents.
If xml-document is not given, then the document to convert comes from
standard input.
The filenames of the Texinfo documents are determined by markup in the
Texi-XML source. (If the filenames are not specified in the markup,
then db2x_texixml attempts to deduce them from the name of the input
file. However, the Texi-XML source should specify the filename, because
it does not work when there are multiple output files or when the Texi-
XML source comes 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.
--info Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo(1), creating Info files
directly instead of Texinfo files.
--plaintext
Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo --no-headers, thereby
creating plain text files.
--help Show brief usage information and exit.
--version
Show version and exit.
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
Texinfo language compatibility. The Texinfo files generated by
db2x_texixml sometimes require Texinfo version 4.7 (the latest version)
to work properly. In particular:
· db2x_texixml relies on makeinfo to automatically add punctuation
after a @ref if it it not already there. Otherwise the hyperlink will
not work in the Info reader (although makeinfo will not emit any
error).
· The new @comma{} command is used for commas (,) occurring inside
argument lists to Texinfo commands, to disambiguate it from the comma
used to separate different arguments. The only alternative otherwise
would be to translate , to . which is obviously undesirable (but
earlier docbook2X versions did this).
If you cannot use version 4.7 of makeinfo, you can still use a sed
script to perform manually the procedure just outlined.
Relation of Texi-XML with the XML output format of makeinfo. The Texi-
XML format used by docbook2X is different and incompatible with the XML
format generated by makeinfo(1) with its --xml option. This situation
arose partly because the Texi-XML format of docbook2X was designed and
implemented independently before the appearance of makeinfo’s XML
format. Also Texi-XML is very much geared towards being machine-
generated from other XML formats, while there seems to be no non-
trivial applications of makeinfo’s XML format. So there is no reason
at this point for docbook2X to adopt makeinfo’s XML format in lieu of
Texi-XML.
BUGS
· Text wrapping in menus is utterly broken for non-ASCII text. It is
probably also broken everywhere else in the output, but that would be
makeinfo’s fault.
· --list-files might not work correctly with --info. Specifically, when
the output Info file get too big, makeinfo will decide to split it
into parts named abc.info-1, abc.info-2, abc.info-3, etc.
db2x_texixml does not know exactly how many of these files there are,
though you can just do an ls to find out.
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_texixml is defined by the XML DTD present at
dtd/Texi-XML in the docbook2X distribution.