NAME

       docbook2texi-spec.pl - convert DocBook Booksto Texinfo documents

SYNOPSIS

       sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl

       nsgmls [ sgml document ]| sgmlspl docbook2texi-spec.pl [ basename ]

DESCRIPTION

       docbook2texi  is  a  sgmlspl  spec  file  that produces GNU Texinfo documents from DocBook
       documents.

       The program reads ESIS produced by nsgmls (or other SGML  parsers)  from  standard  input.
       Currently the document element must be Book, otherwise the results are undefined.

       Its output, the converted Texinfo document, is written to standard output.

       The  file basename.refs will also be created, which contains all the nodes in the document
       and their immediate 'child' nodes.  As node processing always require forward  references,
       docbook2texi  must be run twice for each document: the first time to build the references,
       and the second to actually generate a valid document.

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

       • How  the  hell  do  you  represent a backslash (\) in Texinfo!!@?  I've tried \\ but TeX
         complains about it.

       • Fix breakages found in the test documents.

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

       • 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.

       • There  are  some  dependencies  on  elements  occurring  when they are actually optional
         (according to the DTD).  We need to fix  that  (preferably)  or  prominently  state  the
         requirements.

       • Allow other more common document elements.

       • Separate  out  node  referencing  to  a  separate  script.   Not  only  would it make it
         faster/easier to maintain because it's separate from the main code,  but  also  I  would
         like it to evolve into an automatic DocBook ToC generator.

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                  DOCBOOK2TEXI-SPEC.PL(1)