Re: DocBook <-> TeXinfo and the LinuxDOC team

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow mit edu>]

rosalia@cygnus.com writes:
> 
> [background for Cees: there has been a ton of activity on the GNOME
> list in the last 3 days, with Maciej taking 10 minutes ( :-) I'll bet
> it was actually a couple of hours) to write a documentation extractor
> for Guile docstrings, which generates DocBook out of them,

Much as I'd like to take credit, this was actually the work of Greg
Badros (who would like to be on a db2texi list if it's created). I
just took 10 additional minutes (well, a couple of hours) to write a
bunch of docs using it.

> 
> I think we should contact Cees de Groot about this.  He and the
> LinuxDoc people have taken the DocBook RPM suite and put a lot of
> energy into perfecting them.  To the point where you now have to "rpm
> -e sgml-tools" before you can install my tools on a RedHat 5.1 system!
>:-)
> 
> It is one of my frustrations and shortcomings that I have not made
> enough time to follow their effort more.
> 
> I would eventually like to make sure that they have all that is needed
> for Cygnus and for GNOME, and leave it up to them for the future,
> since I think Cees is much more energetic than I am right now.
> 
> Let us set up the list for discussion of DocBook <-> TeXinfo so that
> we don't drown the GNOME list, but let us all keep an eye on what Cees 
> and co. are doing, and try to make sure that our efforts converge.
> 

That would be a great idea. I think it will happen, it's just a matter
of where the list ends up being hosted.

> PS: the historical note for non-LinuxDoc people is that the Linux
> documentation project used to use a latex-like DTD called LinuxDoc,
> but they are quickly moving to DocBook.

sgml-tools already appears to be able to generate texinfo (or at least
info, I couldn't tell from my cursory look) from it's LinuxDoc
DTD. However, I doubt that would be directly useful for a DocBook ->
texi converter.

The sgml-tools I have (from a stock Red Hat 5.1 install) also seems to
be done mostly in perl. Are there any plans to move to Jade? I think
DSSSL in general and Jade specifically are better solutions in the
long run.

 - Maciej