db2x_texixml(1) docbook2X db2x_texixml(1)NAMEdb2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML
SYNOPSISdb2x_texixml [options]... [xml-document]
DESCRIPTIONdb2x_texixml converts a Texi-XML document into one or more Texinfo doc‐
uments.
If xml-document is not given, then the document to convert comes from
standard input.
The filenames of the Texinfo documents are determined by markup in the
Texi-XML source. (If the filenames are not specified in the markup,
then db2x_texixml attempts to deduce them from the name of the input
file. However, the Texi-XML source should specify the filename, because
it does not work when there are multiple output files or when the Texi-
XML source comes from standard input.)
OPTIONS
--encoding=encoding
Select the character encoding used for the output files. The
available encodings are those of iconv(1). The default encoding
is us-ascii.
The XML source may contain characters that are not representable
in the encoding that you select; in this case the program will
bomb out during processing, and you should choose another encod‐
ing. (This is guaranteed not to happen with any Unicode encod‐
ing such as UTF-8, but unfortunately not everyone is able to
process Unicode texts.)
If you are using GNU’s version of iconv(1), you can affix
//TRANSLIT to the end of the encoding name to attempt translit‐
erations of any unconvertible characters in the output. Beware,
however, that the really inconvertible characters will be turned
into another of those damned question marks. (Aren’t you sick of
this?)
The suffix //TRANSLIT applied to a Unicode encoding — in partic‐
ular, utf-8//TRANSLIT — means that the output files are to re‐
main in Unicode, but markup-level character translations using
utf8trans are still to be done. So in most cases, an English-
language document, converted using --encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT
will actually end up as a US-ASCII document, but any untranslat‐
able characters will remain as UTF-8 without any warning whatso‐
ever. (Note: strictly speaking this is not “transliteration”.)
This method of conversion is a compromise over strict --encod‐
ing=us-ascii processing, which aborts if any untranslatable
characters are encountered.
Note that man pages and Texinfo documents in non-ASCII encodings
(including UTF-8) may not be portable to older (non-internation‐
alized) systems, which is why the default value for this option
is us-ascii.
To suppress any automatic character mapping or encoding conver‐
sion whatsoever, pass the option --encoding=utf-8.
--list-files
Write a list of all the output files to standard output, in ad‐
dition to normal processing.
--output-dir=dir
Specify the directory where the output files are placed. The
default is the current working directory.
This option is ignored if the output is to be written to stan‐
dard output (triggered by the option --to-stdout).
--to-stdout
Write the output to standard output instead of to individual
files.
If this option is used even when there are supposed to be multi‐
ple output documents, then everything is concatenated to stan‐
dard output. But beware that most other programs will not ac‐
cept this concatenated output.
This option is incompatible with --list-files, obviously.
--info Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo(1), creating Info files di‐
rectly instead of Texinfo files.
--plaintext
Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo --no-headers, thereby creat‐
ing plain text files.
--help Show brief usage information and exit.
--version
Show version and exit.
This program uses certain other programs for its operation. If they
are not in their default installed locations, then use the following
options to set their location:
--utf8trans-program=path, --utf8trans-map=charmap
Use the character map charmap with the utf8trans(1) program, in‐
cluded with docbook2X, found under path.
--iconv-program=path
The location of the iconv(1) program, used for encoding conver‐
sions.
NOTES
Texinfo language compatibility. The Texinfo files generated by
db2x_texixml sometimes require Texinfo version 4.7 (the latest version)
to work properly. In particular:
· db2x_texixml relies on makeinfo to automatically add punctuation af‐
ter a @ref if it it not already there. Otherwise the hyperlink will
not work in the Info reader (although makeinfo will not emit any er‐
ror).
· The new @comma{} command is used for commas (,) occurring inside ar‐
gument lists to Texinfo commands, to disambiguate it from the comma
used to separate different arguments. The only alternative otherwise
would be to translate , to . which is obviously undesirable (but
earlier docbook2X versions did this).
If you cannot use version 4.7 of makeinfo, you can still use a sed
script to perform manually the procedure just outlined.
Relation of Texi-XML with the XML output format of makeinfo. The Texi-
XML format used by docbook2X is different and incompatible with the XML
format generated by makeinfo(1) with its --xml option. This situation
arose partly because the Texi-XML format of docbook2X was designed and
implemented independently before the appearance of makeinfo’s XML for‐
mat. Also Texi-XML is very much geared towards being machine-generated
from other XML formats, while there seems to be no non-trivial applica‐
tions of makeinfo’s XML format. So there is no reason at this point
for docbook2X to adopt makeinfo’s XML format in lieu of Texi-XML.
BUGS
· Text wrapping in menus is utterly broken for non-ASCII text. It is
probably also broken everywhere else in the output, but that would be
makeinfo’s fault.
· --list-files might not work correctly with --info. Specifically, when
the output Info file get too big, makeinfo will decide to split it
into parts named abc.info-1, abc.info-2, abc.info-3, etc. db2x_tex‐
ixml does not know exactly how many of these files there are, though
you can just do an ls to find out.
AUTHOR
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
SEE ALSO
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/⟩ .
The input to db2x_texixml is defined by the XML DTD present at
dtd/Texi-XML in the docbook2X distribution.
docbook2X 0.8.8 3 March 2007 db2x_texixml(1)
