docbook2x-man
NAME
docbook2man - Convert DocBook to man pages
SYNOPSIS
docbook2man \kx
[options] xml-document
DESCRIPTION
docbook2man converts the given DocBook XML document into man pages.
By default, the man pages will be output to the current directory.
Only the refentry content
in the DocBook document is converted.
(To convert content outside of a refentry,
stylesheet customization is required. See the docbook2X
package for details.)
The docbook2man command is a wrapper script
for a two-step conversion process.
See the section CONVERSION PROCESS below
for details.
OPTIONS
The available options are essentially the union of the options
from db2x_xsltproc(1) and db2x_manxml(1).
Some commonly-used options are listed below:
--encoding=encoding
Sets the character encoding of the output.
--string-param parameter=value
Sets a stylesheet parameter (options that affect how the output looks).
See Stylesheet parameters below for the parameters that
can be set.
--sgml
Accept an SGML source document as input instead of XML.
uppercase-headings
Brief. Make headings uppercase?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
Headings in man page content should be or should not be uppercased.
manvolnum-cite-numeral-only
Brief. Man page section citation should use only the number
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
When citing other man pages, the man-page section is either given as is,
or has the letters stripped from it, citing only the number of the
section (e.g. section 3x becomes
3). This option specifies which style.
quotes-on-literals
Brief. Display quotes on literal
elements?
Default setting. 0 (boolean false)
If true, render literal elements
with quotes around them.
show-comments
Brief. Display comment elements?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, comments will be displayed, otherwise they are suppressed.
Comments here refers to the comment element,
which will be renamed remark in DocBook V4.0,
not XML comments (<-- like this -->) which are unavailable.
function-parens
Brief. Generate parentheses after a function?
Default setting. 0 (boolean false)
If true, the formatting of
a <function> element will include
generated parenthesis.
xref-on-link
Brief. Should link generate a
cross-reference?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
Man pages cannot render the hypertext links created by link. If this option is set, then the
stylesheet renders a cross reference to the target of the link.
(This may reduce clutter). Otherwise, only the content of the link is rendered and the actual link itself is
ignored.
header-3
Brief. Third header text
Default setting. (blank)
Specifies the text of the third header of a man page,
typically the date for the man page. If empty, the date content for the refentry is used.
header-4
Brief. Fourth header text
Default setting. (blank)
Specifies the text of the fourth header of a man page.
If empty, the refmiscinfo content for
the refentry is used.
header-5
Brief. Fifth header text
Default setting. (blank)
Specifies the text of the fifth header of a man page.
If empty, the manual name, that is, the title of the
book or reference container is used.
default-manpage-section
Brief. Default man page section
Default setting. 1
The source document usually indicates the sections that each man page
should belong to (with manvolnum in
refmeta). In case the source
document does not indicate man-page sections, this option specifies the
default.
custom-localization-file
Brief. URI of XML document containing custom localization data
Default setting. (blank)
This parameter specifies the URI of a XML document
that describes text translations (and other locale-specific information)
that is needed by the stylesheet to process the DocBook document.
The text translations pointed to by this parameter always
override the default text translations
(from the internal parameter localization-file).
If a particular translation is not present here,
the corresponding default translation
is used as a fallback.
This parameter is primarily for changing certain
punctuation characters used in formatting the source document.
The settings for punctuation characters are often specific
to the source document, but can also be dependent on the locale.
To not use custom text translations, leave this parameter
as the empty string.
custom-l10n-data
Brief. XML document containing custom localization data
Default setting. document($custom-localization-file)
This parameter specifies the XML document
that describes text translations (and other locale-specific information)
that is needed by the stylesheet to process the DocBook document.
This parameter is internal to the stylesheet.
To point to an external XML document with a URI or a file name,
you should use the custom-localization-file
parameter instead.
However, inside a custom stylesheet
(not on the command-line)
this paramter can be set to the XPath expression
document(''),
which will cause the custom translations
directly embedded inside the custom stylesheet to be read.
author-othername-in-middle
Brief. Is othername in author a
middle name?
Default setting. 1
If true, the othername of an author
appears between the firstname and
surname. Otherwise, othername
is suppressed.
EXAMPLES
$ docbook2man --solinks manpages.xml $ docbook2man --solinks --encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT manpages.xml $ docbook2man --string-param header-4="Free Recode 3.6" document.xml
CONVERSION PROCESS
1.
The DocBook source is converted by a XSLT stylesheet into an
intermediate XML format, Man-XML.
Man-XML is simpler than DocBook and closer to the man page format;
it is intended to make the stylesheets job easier.
The stylesheet for this purpose is in
xslt/man/docbook.xsl.
For portability, it should always be referred to
by the following URI:
http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/latest/xslt/man/docbook.xslRun this stylesheet with db2x_xsltproc(1). Customizing. You can also customize the output by creating your own XSLT stylesheet changing parameters or adding new templates and importing xslt/man/docbook.xsl.
2.
Man-XML is converted to the actual man pages by db2x_manxml(1).
The docbook2man command does both steps automatically,
but if any problems occur, you can see the errors more clearly
if you do each step separately:
$ db2x_xsltproc -s man mydoc.xml -o mydoc.mxml $ db2x_manxml mydoc.mxml
Options to the conversion stylesheet are described in
the man-pages stylesheets
reference.
Pure XSLT conversion.
An alternative to the db2x_manxml Perl script is the XSLT
stylesheet in
xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl.
This stylesheet performs a similar function
of converting Man-XML to actual man pages.
It is useful if you desire a pure XSLT
solution to man-page conversion.
Of course, the quality of the conversion using this stylesheet
will never be as good as the Perl db2x_manxml,
and it runs slower.
In particular, the pure XSLT version
currently does not support tables in man pages,
but its Perl counterpart does.
Character set conversion
When translating XML to legacy ASCII-based formats with poor support for Unicode, such as man pages and Texinfo, there is always the problem that Unicode characters in the source document also have to be translated somehow.A straightforward character set conversion from Unicode
does not suffice,
because the target character set, usually US-ASCII or ISO Latin-1,
do not contain common characters such as
dashes and directional quotation marks that are widely
used in XML documents. But document formatters (man and Texinfo)
allow such characters to be entered by a markup escape:
for example, \(lq for the left directional quote
.
And if a markup-level escape is not available,
an ASCII transliteration might be used: for example,
using the ASCII less-than sign < for
the angle quotation mark .
So the Unicode character problem can be solved in two steps:
1.
utf8trans(1), a program included in docbook2X, maps
Unicode characters to markup-level escapes or transliterations.
Since there is not necessarily a fixed, official mapping of Unicode characters,
utf8trans can read in user-modifiable character mappings
expressed in text files and apply them. (Unlike most character
set converters.)
In charmaps/man/roff.charmap
and charmaps/man/texi.charmap
are character maps that may be used for man-page and Texinfo conversion.
The programs db2x_manxml(1) and db2x_texixml(1) will apply
these character maps, or another character map specified by the user,
automatically.
2.
The rest of the Unicode text is converted to some other character set
(encoding).
For example, a French document with accented characters
(such as é) might be converted to ISO Latin 1.
This step is applied after utf8trans character mapping,
using the
iconv(1) encoding conversion tool.
Both db2x_manxml(1) and db2x_texixml(1) can call
iconv(1) automatically when producing their output.
FILES
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/man/docbook.xsl
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/catalog.xml
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap.xml
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/catalog.xml
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap.xml
The above files are distributed and installed by the docbook2X package.
NOTES
The docbook2man or the docbook2texi
command described in this manual page
come from the docbook2X package.
It should not be confused with the command of the same
name from the obsoleted docbook-utils package.
LIMITATIONS
Internally there is one long pipeline of programs which your
document goes through. If any segment of the pipeline fails
(even trivially, like from mistyped program options),
the resulting errors can be difficult to decipher
in this case, try running the components of docbook2X
separately.
AUTHOR
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
SEE ALSO
db2x_xsltproc(1), db2x_manxml(1), utf8trans(1)
The docbook2X manual (in Texinfo or HTML format) fully describes
how to convert DocBook to man pages and Texinfo.
Up-to-date information about this program
can be found
at the
.
