ANNOUNCE: the Cygnus DocBook packages, 1998-07-27

[Mark Galassi <rosalia cygnus com>]

[Dudes, I am right now patching up gnome-core/core-docs to work with
the latest DocBook tools.  I'll commit it all and let you know.  The
major impact of this release is that we can now print.  RedHat types:
you might want to pass this on to your technical writers.]

        ANNOUNCE: the Cygnus DocBook packages, 1998-07-27

Dear DocBook enthusiasts,

I have placed the latest DocBook packages on the Cygnus anonymous ftp
server:

    ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/home/rosalia/docware/

There are improvements in the stylesheets, but the real novelty in
this release is the output using jade's TeX backend.  The new jadetex
(which also comes with patches to jade) is incorporated and works much
better.  Tables, for example, are now well-rendered in the TeX
output.  Yay!

As an example (which also includes tables), you can look at my DocBook
tutorial, which has been converted with "db2html", "db2ps" and
"db2rtf".  The stuff is at:

     http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro.html

------------ project status ------------

Since we started maintaining these RPMs a lot of things have happened,
but some still need to happen.  Here are some issues I would like
people to know about or think about.  This list is shorter than it
used to be.

stylesheets
-----------
   Norman Walsh is really cooking on maintaining the modular
   stylesheets.  That is good, since all I have to is track those and
   package them up.  [This continues to be true.]

jade
----
   James Clark is very actively developing jade.  Unfortunately jade
   does not build in a GNU-like way, so I will have to do a bit more
   work to track that (I'm slightly behind on jade revisions).  This
   continues to be true, but there is an unfortunate problem with
   jade: it does not compile with egcs or gcc-2.8, so I had to compile
   with g++-2.7.2.3 on a RedHat 5.1 system, which is difficult because
   this Linux version has a bizarre distribution of gcc where the C
   compiler can be either egcs or 2.7.2.3, but the C++ compiler is
   only egcs.  This means that I had to install gcc-2.7.2.3 from
   scratch to put at the start of my path.

popularity
----------
   The LinuxDoc project has decided to migrate from the linuxdoc DTD
   to DocBook.  This means that there will be a ton of momentum behind
   DocBook.  The latest release of the SGMLtools (I hate the name) is
   actually based on the material I have collected here.  I hope that
   if they keep it up, I can turn over the maintaince to them :-),
   but for now I will still continue putting these RPMs out.  [This is
   still true, and I hope to get things to the point in which I can
   just hand things over to the LinuxDoc maintainers.  All I have to
   do is evaluate their package and submit the Cygnus and
   GNOME-specific stuff for them to include.]

intro to docbook
----------------
   My tutorial at
     http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro.html
   is getting a lot of coverage, so I will continue to maintain that
   document.  [I actually have not been maintaining it, beyond
   rebuilding it with the latest tools; how embarassing.]

jadetex
-------
   jadetex is NO LONGER a weak link.  It now works well.


------------ which packages ------------

The files in the RPMS/i386 directory right now are:

docbook-3.0-5.i386.rpm      psgml-1.0.1-5.i386.rpm
jade-1.1_1-3.i386.rpm       sgml-common-0.0-4.i386.rpm
jadetex-1.01-0.i386.rpm     stylesheets-0.3-2.i386.rpm

but you should usually look for the latest versions in that directory.
The directory RPMS/alpha has older versions only.  The directory SRPMS
has current versions of the source RPMs.  I am not maintaining a
cross-platform setup for these tools, but you could try to build the
tools yourself with the SOURCES and SPECS directories.

There used to be a package called sgml-demo, but since I have not yet
updated it, and it is misleading, I am leaving it out for now.

Yours truly,

Mark Galassi
rosalia@cygnus.com
http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/