Re: [help-texinfo] Re: subversion manual in texinfo

[Noah Slater]

Hey,

Karl has asked me to join in the discussion because I am working on
some software that uses Docbook2X to convert between DocBook and
PDF/PS/DVI etc.

I can say that in my experience, Docbook2X is the most mature/complete
DocBook-Texinfo free software tool available. That it involves a
transformation into Texinfo is a huge bonus because instead of trying
(and failing) to master such formats as PDF/PS/DVI it concentrates on
getting Texinfo produced reliably and lets you hook into the already
incredibly mature Texinfo toolchain.

I would like to note that I exlucde any Java tools because the
freeness of the required Java runtime has always been an issue.

Anyway, onwards to your issues so far:

 1) Every time you get a "template not matched" it is because you are
    using a feature that Docbook2x does not support, which usualy
    means something version 5 specific. You can ignore these if you
    like, or transform using XSLT, it's usually not fatal.

    You should take a look at the tool xsltproc for this.


 2) From the error messages that Docbook2x seemed to be giving you it
    sounds like you have a set of files (one for each chapter, say)
    using xincludes and XML entity references. I'm actually playing
    devils advocate, I've used the Subversion book for testing my own
    application, so I know this is the case. Heh.

    Before you run the book through Docbook2x you need to canonicalise
    the XML, replace any XML entity references and resolve the
    xincludes. This should give you one monolithic XML file that you
    can feed into Docbook2X without any problem.

    I suggest you take a look at the tool xmllint for this.

    A sample command:

    xmllint --c14n --noent --nocdata --xinclude book.xml > monolithic-book.xml

HTH,

-- 
Noah Slater <http://bytesexual.org/>

"Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as
society is free to use the results." - R. Stallman