docbook2texi(1) docbook2X docbook2texi(1)NAMEdocbook2texi - Convert DocBook to Texinfo
SYNOPSISdocbook2texi [options] xml-document
DESCRIPTIONdocbook2texi 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 sec‐
tioning 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 gener‐
ate 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 explic‐
it-node-names.
show-comments
Brief. Display comment elements?
Default setting. 1 (boolean true)
If true, comments will be displayed, otherwise they are sup‐
pressed. 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 in‐
to (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 de‐
scribes text translations (and other locale-specific informa‐
tion) that is needed by the stylesheet to process the DocBook
document.
The text translations pointed to by this parameter always over‐
ride 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 fall‐
back.
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 doc‐
ument, 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 in‐
side 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 first‐
name 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, over‐
riding the setting in the document itself and the automatic se‐
lection in the stylesheet. If the document is a set, this param‐
eter 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, Gener‐
al 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 Inter‐
active Plotting Program.
Note
Menu descriptions may also be set directly in the source docu‐
ment. But if this parameter is not empty, then it always over‐
rides 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:
c, cp Concept index
f, fn Function index
v, vr Variable index
k, ky Keystroke index
p, pg Program index
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 de‐
faultlabel 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
.fi
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 inter‐
mediate 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_tex‐
ixml(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
.fi
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 trans‐
lated somehow.
A straightforward character set conversion from Unicode does not suf‐
fice, because the target character set, usually US-ASCII or ISO
Latin-1, do not contain common characters such as dashes and direction‐
al 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 charac‐
ters 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 map‐
pings expressed in text files and apply them. (Unlike most charac‐
ter set converters.)
In charmaps/man/roff.charmap and charmaps/man/texi.charmap are
character maps that may be used for man-page and Texinfo conver‐
sion. The programs db2x_manxml(1) and db2x_texixml(1) will apply
these character maps, or another character map specified by the us‐
er, automatically.
2. The rest of the Unicode text is converted to some other character
set (encoding). For example, a French document with accented char‐
acters (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 dif‐
ficult to decipher — in this case, try running the components of doc‐
book2X separately.
AUTHOR
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
SEE ALSOdb2x_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 docbook2X
Web site ⟨http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/⟩ .
docbook2X 0.8.8 3 March 2007 docbook2texi(1)
