Evolution of the DocBook tools

[Eric Bischoff <ebisch at cybercable dot tm dot fr>]

Jorge Godoy wrote:
> 
> 
> You might have several catalogs merged in your personal catalog
> file. How? You can add a `CATALOG "file.cat"' in it and it will
> "automagically" include the other catalog.

Of course you can do a lot of things manually. But what I was saying is
that a standard installation needed the "install-catalog" script (or
some equivalent mechanism if you want to use the CATALOG keyword) to be
installed *early* with respect to the other packages.

But yes, it's true, "install-catalog" could be improved to use the
CATALOG keyword instead of really merging the catalog themselves. But
wasn't there a problem with the CATALOG keyword that wasn't supported by
jade or something else ?

> Look at "conectiva.cat" in the file I've sent you in the other
> message. It solves lots of problems and you don't need to merge an
> entire new catalog each time a new release is done. And, besides, you
> use the stylesheets catalog with all it's relative paths. It works
> wonderfully.

You're mentioning another problem that I hadn't been speaking about :
merging catalogs implied that the other packages couldn't be in their
own directory, because the relative paths became relative to the merged
CATALOG file. There are two
ways to work around this (if not more) :
- accept not to merge catalogs in the db2* scripts (my solution)
- use the CATALOG keyword (your solution)

but sure, the best would be to offer the choice between both solutions,
therefore to enhance install-catalog script, with the restriction that I
can remember the CATALOG keyword not to be recognized by some programs.
My db2* scripts accept both a merged catalog or separate catalogs, the
first having the priority, of course.

> > That's what I did for Caldera, and I'll keep it unless Debian has
> > different names with a clean directory layout too. It would be stupid to
> > have only two-letter differences... ;-)
> 
> I'm doing some work at Conectiva Linux on that too.
> I'm using /usr/lib/sgml and then creating subdirectories with each
> stylesheet. It's still a mess, but I'm cleaning it up.

Same idea for what I did. What are your directory names ? I chose :

docbook-dtd  docbook-stylesheets  iso-entities-8879.1986  jade  kde 

Let's all take the same names, if you accept. I also suggest "gnome" for
Gnome project customizations  and "ldp" for Linux Documentation Project
customizations.

And I think it is becoming urgent that Mark should give us his blessing,
so those evolutions become "official" ;-)

-- 
Eric Bischoff  -  Documentation and Localization
Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH - Linux for Business!
Tel: +49 9131 7192 300 -  Fax: +49 9131 7192 399
http://www.caldera.de/