NAME

       docbook2man-spec.pl - convert DocBook RefEntries to man pages

SYNOPSIS

       sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl

       nsgmls [ sgml document ]| sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl

DESCRIPTION

       docbook2man  is  a  sgmlspl spec file that produced man pages (using the -man macros) from
       DocBook RefEntry markup.

       The program reads ESIS produced by nsgmls (or other SGML  parsers)  from  standard  input.
       Markup not found in RefEntry is discarded.

       Its  output,  the  converted  man pages, are written to the current directory.  If RefMeta
       information is not specified in a RefEntry, then the man page will be written to  standard
       output.

       The  file  manpage.links  will also be created, which contains any aliases of the manpages
       generated.  This file is in the format:

       <man page> <alias
       manpage>

       The manpage.refs file keeps track of XRef references.  Note that if the input document has
       any  forward  references,  then  docbook2man  may have to be invoked twice (the first time
       updating manpage.refs) to resolve them.

REQUIREMENTS

       The SGMLSpm package from CPAN.  This package includes the  sgmlspl  script  that  is  also
       needed.

LIMITATIONS

       Trying  docbook2man  on  non-DocBook or non-conformant SGML results in undefined behavior.
       :-)

       This program is a slow, dodgy Perl script.

       This program does not come close to supporting all the possible markup in DocBook, and may
       produce wrong output in some cases with supported markup.

TO DO

       Obvious stuff:

       • Fix docbook2man breakages found in the test documents, especially weird.sgml.

       • Add new element handling and fix existing handling.  Be robust.

       • Produce  cleanest,  readable  man  output  as  possible  (unlike some other converters).
         Follow Linux man(7) convention.  As conversion to man pages is  usually  not  done  very
         often, it is better to be slower/more complicated than to produce wrong output.  Also if
         someone wants to give up using DocBook for whatever reason, the last-converted man pages
         can then be maintained manually.

       • Make it faster. I think most of the speed problems so far is with parsing ESIS.  Rewrite
         SGMLS.pm with C and/or get input directly from SP.

       • Support other (human) languages.  But what  to  do  with  non-ASCII  charsets?   SGMLSpm
         doesn't  report  them  and roff does not grok them.  [Comment: text after enclosed lists
         (and SS blocks) will break docbook2man] If we do this, more people can use DocBook.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 1998-1999 Steve Cheng <steve@ggi-project.org>

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the  GNU  General  Public  License  as  published  by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
       see the file COPYING.  If not, please write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave,
       Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

                                         29 October 2012                   DOCBOOK2MAN-SPEC.PL(1)