RE: experimental release of linuxdoc-tools (based on sgml-tools 1.0.9)

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Di Carlo [mailto:adam@onshore.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 7:43 AM
> To: Greg Ferguson
> Cc: Taketoshi Sano; ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org;
> ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org; sgml-tools@via.ecp.fr; dave@lafn.org;
> cg@cdegroot.com; guylhemlistes@free.fr; gferg@metalab.unc.edu;
> debian-sgml@lists.debian.org; JF@linux.or.jp
> Subject: Re: experimental release of linuxdoc-tools (based on 
> sgml-tools
> 1.0.9)
> 
> "Greg Ferguson" <gferg@hoop.timonium.sgi.com> writes:
> 
> > I'd like to see if we can get linuxdoc support into the v2
> > sgml-tools packages. We'd need to provide the DTD and a
> > set of DSSSL stylesheets along with perhaps a couple of
> > catalog files.
> 
> Um, I don't think linuxdoc *has* a DTD or DSSSL files.

It does have a DTD, on my RH system it's in /usr/lib/sgml-tools/dtd.  It
does not have DSSSL files, because (I think) all of that is handled directly
through the tools.  The original system doesn't appear to be very
extensible, although that could just be me.  

> OTOH, SGMLtools Lite or whatever *could* support sgmltools v1 or
> linuxdoc tools or whatever it is called.  Supposing that software is
> already installed, all it would have to do is provide the capability
> to wrap around the linuxdoc scripts with it's own 'sgmltools' wrapper.
> If anyone wants to do this, apply as a developer at sourceforge.
> 
> > Do you think we should go that route? That way we have 1
> > toolset (jade/openjade), with support for both DTDs (DocBook
> > and Linuxdoc).
> 
> I approve of one tool which is extensible -- it's name is sgmltools
> lite, now a days.  I object to the idea of merging the linuxdoc
> perl/ASP or whatever it is back into the sgmltools lite package.

I don't think that it's really practical to merge them.  The original tools
do some things a heck of a lot better than any of the newer ones (text
output from Linuxdoc is much better, although not quite perfect).  Maybe if
we can get a text converter for generic SGML, then this will make sense.  

I just read Greg F's email, so I'm going to reply to that here as well (I
get at least two copies of this anyway, I might as well reduce the number of
posts).  

It's probably true that creating a DSSSL stylesheet for Linuxdoc wouldn't be
all that complex, but I'm still a little troubled by the lack of a good text
backend.  I haven't seen any mass-migration of the LDP authors to DocBook
yet, so I haven't really pushed to get something better than Lynx.  
	Grego


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