docbook

[Martin Pool <mbp samba org>]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> Define 'semantically' please. 

(Define semantically semantically, etc.)

The point is that the document is entirely free of instructions about
what color, font, page size, etc to use.  These are determined in a
later processing step which produces the document for a particular
format (online help reader, A4 printout, etc.)

This is a good direction to move in, but it makes getting started more
complicated.  This is not helped by different distributions shipping
different sets of tools.

This is an easy-to-read start:

  http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DocBook-Demystification-HOWTO/index.html

> So how does a redhat user actually go about reading a docbook file, 
> complete and properly formatted as the author intended for it to be 
> seen/printed?

The command you need is probably

  xmlto html foomanual.sgml

  http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/redhat/8.0/i386/xmlto-0.0.10-4.noarch.html

This will produce HTML you can read in a web browser.  Similarly for
ps, pdf, txt, etc.

Although the syntax may be more verbose than LaTeX or your other
favourite language, Docbook is a case where "standard is better than
better".  It shows every sign of becoming more friendly.  Learn to
love it.

And for emacs get psgml, which largely avoids needing to type tag names.

-- 
Martin