[Techtalk] Keeping legal notices in Docbook.

[David Merrill]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 04:22:57PM +1100, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Introduction: Docbook is an SGML/XML (think 'like HTML, used for
> webpages') markup. It is used to markup FAQs, technical books, HOWTOs
> and the like, and there are all kinds of tools to take the markup and
> translate it into web pages or plain text, among other things. But there
> are some things I can't seem to do...
> 
> I'm just learning Docbook for the Linuxchix FAQs. Everything is going
> alright as far as compiling goes, but here's what I'd like to be able to
> do:
> 
>  * Produce text without an HTML intermediate step. And will it include
>    URLs? If not, is there any way to generate HTML contains the external
>    URLs, but not any document internal URLs (since they're useless when
>    you convert to text with links -dump anyway).

I don't know about that, but I do have a utility I am working on right
now that will let you work in text, and convert the text into DocBook.
You're welcome to take a look at it. It's in very active development,
but I would be happy to share it with you.

It uses a postgres back end (and you would be welcome to use mine,
already set up and operational) to house the meta-data, and text tags
to markup. It looks like this:

=Section|id=

*This would be
*a bulleted
*list

#numbered list

[[foo.org|Home Page]] <- ulink

[filename]

etc., and you can include DocBook tags inline also. Blank lines
automatically close para tags.

See db.linuxdoc.org, log on using guest/guest, and look at the
document named "Test", or see the latest LDP Weekly News on our site.

>  * Is there any way to get jade/docbook.dsl to produce an output file
>    named anything other than t1.html? jade's documentation is lying
>    about the function of the -o flag as far as I can see, because no
>    matter what I put there, t1.html it is!

I don't know, but I really recommend you try xsltproc instead of jade
for working with xml. It is *much* faster, for one thing. I no longer
use jade at all.

>  * Is there any way to force the output to contain the contents of any
>    <legalnotice></legalnotice> tags? Jenn is using them in the FAQs, but
>    they don't show up in the output, which is rather a nuisance. It
>    would be nice to have text and HTML versions that actually include
>    the licencing.

That would be a simple xsl hack. If you tell me what exact stylesheets
you're using (and which DTD version -- 4.1.2?) I will be happy to do
it for you or point you to the right place.

-- 
David C. Merrill                         http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david at lupercalia.net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org

I circle around, I circle around
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing my long wing feathers as I fly.
		-- Native American Ghost Dance