Re: DOCBOOK: Need tips and speeding-up techniques for DocBook formatting

[eichin at thok dot org (Mark W. Eichin)]

> I can't believe I needed more than 4 hours to format a plain ascii file

Seems reasonable for a training exercise, at least if you only have
the reference manual and users guide to work with; one of the reasons
I've been eagerly awaiting the O'Reilly book is to help push the
learning curve down a bit...

> Do you have also some tips to share on how to separate a DocBook
> document into different files for easier maintenance?

There are some examples you can find in the archives for this list,
but basically if you define entities for the sub-files:
<!doctype book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
 <!ENTITY voidlist SYSTEM "gen_voidlist.sgml">
]>

and then put the toplevel structure in the same file:
<book>
  <bookinfo>
  ...
  </bookinfo>
  &voidlist;
</book>

Then in the sub file (gen_voidlist.sgml, in this case) you just put
raw content:
<reference>
  <title>voidlist</title>
  ...
</reference>

Followed by an emacs "local variable" section hidden in an sgml comment:

<!--
Local Variables:
sgml-parent-document: ("gen_code.sgml" "book" "reference")
End:
-->

which basically tells psgml-mode where to find the file and location
in the tree that this file actually is.

As for CVS: I just use it.  Some makefile rules (make all-html) help
simplify things for processing multiple books, but it is just
straightforward use of make.