NAME
docbook2texi-spec.pl - convert DocBook Booksto Texinfo documents
SYNOPSIS
sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl
nsgmls [ sgml document ]| sgmlspl docbook2texi-spec.pl [ basename ]
DESCRIPTION
docbook2texi is a sgmlspl spec file that produces GNU Texinfo documents
from DocBook documents.
The program reads ESIS produced by nsgmls (or other SGML parsers) from
standard input. Currently the document element must be Book, otherwise
the results are undefined.
Its output, the converted Texinfo document, is written to standard
output.
The file basename.refs will also be created, which contains all the
nodes in the document and their immediate ’child’ nodes. As node
processing always require forward references, docbook2texi must be run
twice for each document: the first time to build the references, and
the second to actually generate a valid document.
REQUIREMENTS
The SGMLSpm package from CPAN. This package includes the sgmlspl
script that is also needed.
LIMITATIONS
Trying docbook2man on non-DocBook or non-conformant SGML results in
undefined behavior. :-)
This program is a slow, dodgy Perl script.
This program does not come close to supporting all the possible markup
in DocBook, and may produce wrong output in some cases with supported
markup.
TO DO
· How the hell do you represent a backslash (\) in Texinfo!!@? I’ve
tried \\ but TeX complains about it.
· Fix breakages found in the test documents.
· Add new element handling and fix existing handling. Be robust.
· Make it faster. I think most of the speed problems so far is with
parsing ESIS. Rewrite SGMLS.pm with C and/or get input directly from
SP.
· There are some dependencies on elements occurring when they are
actually optional (according to the DTD). We need to fix that
(preferably) or prominently state the requirements.
· Allow other more common document elements.
· Separate out node referencing to a separate script. Not only would
it make it faster/easier to maintain because it’s separate from the
main code, but also I would like it to evolve into an automatic
DocBook ToC generator.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1998-1999 Steve Cheng <steve@ggi-project.org>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; see the file COPYING. If not, please write to the
Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
05 June 2008