Re: Kudos and question

["Greg Ferguson" <gferg@hoop.timonium.sgi.com>]

On Mar 23,  8:08am, Pal Domokos wrote:
> Subject: Kudos and question
>
>
> I have a few questions about the current state of the DocBook-ization
> of linuxdoc. Perhaps it would be beneficial to all authors if somebody
> clarified these issues.
>
> So: all existing HOWTOs had been converted to DocBook, as we all know.
> Furthermore, HOWTOs are now accepted in DocBook format also.
> My question is: what if I decide to migrate to DocBook and send all
> future updates of my HOWTO in this format? How will the LinuxDoc
> version of the HOWTO get updated? Or is the DocBook format the
> "official" source now and are all other, non-SGML variants
> produced from this source? In this case, we probably don't need
> the files in LinuxDoc format any more.

I can speak to this in some detail. In the processing environment
currently established on our host machine [metalab], which has
(hopefully!) improved turn-around time of publishing updates, we
can transparently handle DocBook and/or linuxdoc SGML documents.

Part of the processing done on a linuxdoc-encoded document is
to convert to DocBook, using ld2db (I'm going to put the links
to the packages used on metalab at the end of this msg; I've
been meaning to do that).

All native or derived DocBook instances can be accessed
from (full HOWTOs) :

  http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/docbook

and for mini-HOWTOs:

  http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini/other-formats/docbook

If a document is given to us in linuxdoc, that is considered to
be the "official" format. The DocBook SGML derived from the
linuxdoc instance is usable, but can certainly benefit from
an editing pass by the author.  For that reason, it is not
considered to be the official version UNTIL the author dictates
that to us. An author can certainly use that derived version as a
starting point for their move to DocBook, if they so choose.

Once an author submits to us a DocBook instance of their document,
and indicates that the DocBook instance is considered to be the
official instance,  we will either remove (or archive) the linuxdoc
version from the LDP host machine (metalab).

Does that sound like a reasonable approach?

We have a few DocBook-only HOWTOs currently in place, most
of which were pulled from the OSWG CVS archive (with the author's
permission): Cable-Modem, RPM, DHCP; to name a few.

> Miscellaneous: about a month ago somebody sent a guide, called RUTE,
> to this list, as a donation to linuxdoc. Has anybody answered the
> post?

I'll take care of that. It looks to be available only in PostScript,
tex, and PDF.

----

In case anyone is interested, here are the tools being used for
processing on metalab:

  =======================
  For support of linuxdoc:
  =======================

sgml-tools 1.0.9 -
  ftp://ftp.us.sgmltools.org/pub/SGMLtools/v1.0/sgml-tools-1.0.9.tar.gz

htmldoc (1.8.4) -
  ftp://ftp.easysw.com/pub/htmldoc/1.8.4/htmldoc-1.8.4-source.zip

fltk 1.0.7 (required by htmldoc for their GUI; I built it anyway) -
  ftp://ftp.fltk.org/pub/fltk/1.0.7/fltk-1.0.7-source.zip

ld2db -
  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rrt1001/ld2db.zip

  ======================
  For support of DocBook:
  ======================

Jade (1.2.1) -
   ftp://ftp.jclark.com/pub/jade/jade-1.2.1.tar.gz

DSSSL (1.52) -
   http://nwalsh.com/docbook/dsssl/db152.zip

DocBook DTD (3.1) -
   http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/3.1/docbk31.zip

Entities -
   ftp://ftp.ornl.gov/pub/sgml/WG8/DOCS/


best regards,


-- 
Greg Ferguson     - s/w engr / mtlhd         | gferg@sgi.com
SGI Tech Pubs     - http://techpubs.sgi.com  | 
Linux Doc Project - http://www.linuxdoc.org  |


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