Ubuntu Manpage: db2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML

NAME

       db2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML

SYNOPSIS

       db2x_texixml [options]... [xml-document]

DESCRIPTION

       db2x_texixml converts a Texi-XML document into one or more Texinfo documents.

       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 encoding. (This is guaranteed not to happen with any Unicode
encoding 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 transliterations 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 particular,
utf-8//TRANSLIT — means that the output files are to remain 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 untranslatable characters will
remain as UTF-8 without any warning whatsoever. (Note: strictly speaking this is
not “transliteration”.) This method of conversion is a compromise over strict
--encoding=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-internationalized) systems, which is why the
default value for this option is us-ascii.

To suppress any automatic character mapping or encoding conversion whatsoever, pass
the option --encoding=utf-8.

--list-files
Write a list of all the output files to standard output, in addition 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 standard 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 multiple output
documents, then everything is concatenated to standard output. But beware that
most other programs will not accept this concatenated output.

This option is incompatible with --list-files, obviously.

--info Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo(1), creating Info files directly instead of
Texinfo files.

--plaintext
Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo --no-headers, thereby creating 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, included with
docbook2X, found under path.

--iconv-program=path
The location of the iconv(1) program, used for encoding conversions.

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 after a @ref if it it
not already there. Otherwise the hyperlink will not work in the Info reader (although
makeinfo will not emit any error).

• The new @comma{} command is used for commas (,) occurring inside argument 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 format.
Also Texi-XML is very much geared towards being machine-generated from other XML formats,
while there seems to be no non-trivial applications 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_texixml 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>.