DocBook

[Ben Pfaff]

Edward Glowacki <glowack2@msu.edu> writes:

[...about DocBook...]

> The downside appears to be the complexity of running stuff to
> process your docs.  I think you would definately want to have a
> Makefile or some handy scripts to do your document processing,
> because you have no chance whatsoever of remembering all the
> proper syntax for all the commands involved. [...]

You don't do this for *all* your documents?  To me, a "document"
under Unix is a directory with a Makefile in it.  Object Linking
and Embedding?  ActiveX?  Bah!  Just put in a copy of that .eps
and add a \includegraphics or @image command or <IMG> tag or
whatever.

You should see some of my documents: they have files that
generate files that generate files...  Hell, my webpage is
generated this way using m4 and Perl and shell hackery and GIMP
scripting and all sorts of klugery.  A good[1] example of this
sort of thing can be seen in the alphas of GNU libavl on my
webpage.  To generate a PDF version of the libavl book, the
following things occur when you type `make' if nothing's been
built yet:

	* All the graphics are built:

		- First the `texitree' program is compiled.

		- `texitree' converts all the .tree files to
                  .ps's.

		- (For HTML output the .ps's would then be
                  converted into .png's.)

	* The texiweb program is compiled:

		- texiweb's LR parser-generator is compiled and
                  run.  This generates its LR parser.

		- texiweb is built using the parser from the
                  previous step.

	* The book itself is built:

		- texiweb is run on the TexiWEB source for the
                  book, producing Texinfo output.

		- texi2dvi is run on the Texinfo, which runs tex
                  two or three times, producing .dvi output.

		- dvips is run on the .dvi, producing .ps output.

		- ps2pdf is run on the .ps, producing .pdf
                  output.

I had a point to all this, but I guess I ended up just boasting
about how much more complicated I make things ;-)

[1] Well, the Makefile could be better written, but it's only an
alpha release.  The final version will be much better.

-- 
"While the Melissa license is a bit unclear, Melissa aggressively
 encourages free distribution of its source code."
--Kevin Dalley <kevin@seti.org>