RE: DocBook Walkthrough?

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerard Beekmans [mailto:gerard@linuxfromscratch.org]
> Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2000 6:01 AM
> To: ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org
> Subject: Re: DocBook Walkthrough?
> 
> > Pardon me but these changes were made to the sgmltools 
> almost a year ago.
> > Using the ID stuff is the proper way. I still feel you try 
> to let the SGML
> > file do what the stylesheets should handle.
> 
> Sure, but what if somebody doesn't use sgmltools? I've used
> sgmltoos-2.0.2 but the id= attribute didn't work for 
> filenames, i had to
> use the <?dbhtml> tag.
> 
> I myself have a high preference to use stylesheets and DTD's 
> unmodified
> as they are downloaded from sites as docbook.org open-source.org (or
> something like that?) since that's the version most people 
> have. If I go
> and use modifications that only have made in sgmltool's version of the
> stylesheets then those SGML files would only work best with that
> sgmltols version and not universally.

I do not see any problems with using modified stylesheets.  The stylesheets
are NOT any sort of standard, except a de-facto one.  DocBook is NOT where
you change how your document looks, only what it means.  If you want to
change how it looks, make changes to the stylesheets.  I hate to sound like
a purist, but that's the best way to to do things.  If you do make changes,
and want to let everyone process the document into binaries that are the
same as yours, provide them with the stylesheet modifications that you've
made.  

> All I am doing it writing SGML that has the same output for everybody
> regardless the tool they happen to use (plain jade with default
> stylesheets and DTD, or sgmltools with their modified versions and
> perhaps other tools. Most of them all use the 'jade' package 
> and built a
> front-end around it. So I just run jade directly without 
> front-ends (and
> write a few simple shell scripts so I don't have to type the long jade
> commands to get what I want).

DocBook isn't about output, it's about content.  I use the cygnus rpm
scripts and wrappers.  They are, as you said, just a frontend to jade, like
everything else.  All of the frontends should provide some sort of method to
use an alternative stylesheet, so it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
Why do you want to write your own front ends, when there are already at
least two other groups of people writing these?
	Greg


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