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Re: converting sgml docbook 3.0 to texinfo


Hi Joshua,

You wrote:

> I'm working on getting some documentation for Cygwin into texinfo format.
> It is currently (I think) in DocBook 3.0. I am quite a beginner with db,

[...]

> Now, we would like users to be able to read the User's Guide online with
> info, pinfo, emacs, etc. and so want to get some texinfo or at least info
> files out of our sgml. I've been trying for the last couple of weeks to get
> docbook2x to work, but it doesn't look like this is going to be easy. I don't
> think some of the perl modules it requires will work on Cygwin without major
> overhaul. 
> 
> Anyone have any other suggestions?

Instead of converting your DocBook source to texinfo, you could try
converting your generated HTML to texinfo instead. There are at least a
couple of applications designed to do HTML-to-texinfo conversion:

  Will Estes' html2texi (written in C)
  http://www.uncg.edu/~wlestes/software/html2texi/

  Michael Ernst's html2texi (Perl script)
  http://pag.lcs.mit.edu/~mernst/software/#html2texi

Will Estes' C app compiles and seems to run OK on Cygwin.

Michael Ernst's Perl script has a couple dependencies, but will work on
Cygwin if you get those met. One is to install the HTML::TreeBuilder
Perl module, which is in CPAN -- so you should be able to install it by:

  1. Starting up CPAN shell:

     perl -MCPAN -e shell

  2. At the cpan> prompt, type:

     install HTML::TreeBuilder

It also depends on "checkargs.pm" module that's not in CPAN; instead you
need to grab it from:

  http://pag.lcs.mit.edu/~mernst/software/#checkargs

...and then manually install it somewhere in your Perl @INC path, e.g.,
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl

Another solution might be to give up on trying to run the conversion on
your local Cygwin system, and run it on a local or remote Linux system
that you can get docbook2x installed on or that has docbook2x already
installed. If you don't have a local Linux system, maybe you can get
shell access to a remote one. For example, if you have a Sourceforge
account, I think you can get SSH access to the Sourceforge "compile
farm" (cf.sourceforge.net), which includes at least one machine (running
Red Hat 7.3) that has the docbook2x stuff installed.

HTH,

  --Mike



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