NAME
docbook2texi - Convert DocBook to Texinfo
SYNOPSIS
docbook2texi \kx
[options] xml-document
DESCRIPTION
docbook2texi converts the given
DocBook XML document into one or more Texinfo documents.
By default, these Texinfo documents will be output to the current
directory.
The docbook2texi 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
for db2x_xsltproc(1) and db2x_texixml(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.
STYLESHEET PARAMETERS
captions-display-as-headings
Brief. Use heading markup for minor captions?
Default setting. 0 (boolean false)
If true, title
content in some (formal) objects are rendered with the Texinfo
@heading commands.
If false, captions are rendered as an emphasized paragraph.
links-use-pxref
Brief. Translate link using
@pxref
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, link is translated
with the hypertext followed by the cross reference in parentheses.
Otherwise, the hypertext content serves as the cross-reference name
marked up using @ref. Typically info displays this
contruct badly.
explicit-node-names
Brief. Insist on manually constructed Texinfo node
names
Default setting. 0 (boolean false)
Elements in the source document can influence the Texinfo node name
generation specifying either a xreflabel, or for the sectioning elements,
a title with role='texinfo-node' in the
*info container.
However, for the majority of source documents, explicit Texinfo node
names are not available, and the stylesheet tries to generate a
reasonable one instead, e.g. from the normal title of an element.
The generated name may not be optimal. If this option is set and the
stylesheet needs to generate a name, a warning is emitted and
generate-id is always used for the name.
When the hashtable extension is not available, the stylesheet cannot
check for node name collisions, and in this case, setting this option
and using explicit node names are recommended.
This option is not set (i.e. false) by default.
Note
The absolute fallback for generating node names is using the XSLT
function generate-id, and the stylesheet always
emits a warning in this case regardless of the setting of
explicit-node-names.
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.
funcsynopsis-decoration
Brief. Decorate elements of a FuncSynopsis?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, elements of the FuncSynopsis will be decorated (e.g. bold or
italic). The decoration is controlled by functions that can be redefined
in a customization layer.
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.
refentry-display-name
Brief. Output NAME header before 'RefName'(s)?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, a "NAME" section title is output before the list
of 'RefName's.
manvolnum-in-xref
Brief. Output manvolnum as part of
refentry cross-reference?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
if true, the manvolnum is used when cross-referencing
refentrys, either with xref
or citerefentry.
prefer-textobjects
Brief. Prefer textobject
over imageobject?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, the
textobject
in a mediaobject
is preferred over any
imageobject.
(Of course, for output formats other than Texinfo, you usually
want to prefer the imageobject,
but Info is a text-only format.)
In addition to the values true and false, this parameter
may be set to 2 to indicate that
both the text and the images should be output.
You may want to do this because some Texinfo viewers
can read images. Note that the Texinfo @image
command has its own mechanism for switching between text
and image output but we do not use this here.
The default is true.
semantic-decorations
Brief. Use Texinfo semantic inline markup?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, the semantic inline markup of DocBook is translated into
(the closest) Texinfo equivalent. This is the default.
However, because the Info format is limited to plain text,
the semantic inline markup is often distinguished by using
explicit quotes, which may not look good.
You can set this option to false to suppress these.
(For finer control over the inline formatting, you can
use your own stylesheet.)
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.
output-file
Brief. Name of the Info file
Default setting. (blank)
This parameter specifies the name of the final Info file,
overriding the setting in the document itself and the automatic
selection in the stylesheet. If the document is a set, this parameter has no effect.
Important
Do not include the .info
extension in the name.
(Note that this parameter has nothing to do with the name of
the Texi-XML output by the XSLT processor you
are running this stylesheet from.)
directory-category
Brief. The categorization of the document in the Info directory
Default setting. (blank)
This is set to the category that the document
should go under in the Info directory of installed Info files.
For example, General Commands.
Note
Categories may also be set directly in the source document.
But if this parameter is not empty, then it always overrides the
setting in the source document.
directory-description
Brief. The description of the document in the Info directory
Default setting. (blank)
This is a short description of the document that appears in
the Info directory of installed Info files.
For example, An Interactive Plotting Program.
Note
Menu descriptions may also be set directly in the source document.
But if this parameter is not empty, then it always overrides the
setting in the source document.
index-category
Brief. The Texinfo index to use
Default setting. cp
The Texinfo index for indexterm
and index is specified using the
role attribute. If the above
elements do not have a role, then
the default specified by this parameter is used.
The predefined indices are:
d, tp
Data type index
User-defined indices are not yet supported.
qanda-defaultlabel
Brief. Sets the default for defaultlabel on QandASet.
Default setting.
If no defaultlabel attribute is specified on a QandASet, this
value is used. It must be one of the legal values for the defaultlabel
attribute.
qandaset-generate-toc
Brief. Is a Table of Contents created for QandASets?
Default setting.
If true, a ToC is constructed for QandASets.
EXAMPLES
$ docbook2texi tdg.xml
$ docbook2texi --encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT tdg.xml
$ docbook2texi --string-param semantic-decorations=0 tdg.xml
CONVERSION PROCESS
Converting to Texinfo
DocBook documents are converted to Texinfo in two steps:
1.
The DocBook source is converted by a XSLT stylesheet into an intermediate
XML format, Texi-XML.
Texi-XML is simpler than DocBook and closer to the Texinfo format;
it is intended to make the stylesheets job easier.
The stylesheet for this purpose is in
xslt/texi/docbook.xsl.
For portability, it should always be referred to
by the following URI:
http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/latest/xslt/texi/docbook.xsl
Run 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/texi/docbook.xsl.
2.
Texi-XML is converted to the actual Texinfo files by db2x_texixml(1).
The
docbook2texi 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 texi mydoc.xml -o mydoc.txml
$ db2x_texixml mydoc.txml
Options to the conversion stylesheet are described
in the Texinfo stylesheets
reference.
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/texi/docbook.xsl
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/backend/db2x_texixml.xsl
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/catalog.xml
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/texi.charmap.xml
/usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/texi.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_texixml(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
.