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Re: [docbook-apps] Converting HTML to DocBook


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christian Hattemer" <c.hattemer@arcor.de>
To: <docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 4:15 AM
Subject: [docbook-apps] Converting HTML to DocBook


> Hi,
>
> I've converted a website to DocBook.
> (If you want to see the source look at:
> http://www.fbi.fh-darmstadt.de/~erbs/Databases/)
> This was done mostly automatically with an
> enhanced version of the Html2DocBook stylesheet.
>
> The goal is to produce a printed version (PDF) and the
> website (HTML) from DocBook.
>
> I'm now fixing the document to make it vaild and to correct things that
> were not converted right. In the process I've encountered a few problems:
>
> There are some tables with a colored background I'd like to keep. DocBook
> already has bgcolor attributes in its tables, but they aren't used by the
HTML
> stylesheets. They only use processing instructions to create a bgcolor
> attribute in the output. Is that processing instruction perhaps a leftover
from
> a previous version of DocBook which didn't have bgcolor attributes? If so,
are
> there plans to convert the stylesheets to use the bgcolor attributes
directly? Or
> do I have to create a customization layer to do this myself?

The HTML table support was just added, and I believe the bgcolor attribute
was just missed. You should file a bug report on the DocBook SourceForge
site so it gets fixed in the next release.

> There are also a few cases where I could need bgcolor in a entry-Element,
where it
> isn't yet allowed.

There you will have to use the processing instruction.

> The original website sometimes uses quite heavily nested tables, while
DocBook only
> allows one level of nesting.

Actually, the CALS table model permits an <entry> to contain an <entrytbl>,
which is a nested table.

But you are right, the <td> element doesn't include informaltable, although
it seems it could.  You might file another request under the DocBook RFEs on
SourceForge as well.

> The site follows the common practice in HTML to use
> tables to layout elements next to each other on the page. How can I
produce a page
> with simmilar layout with the markup DocBook offers?

Generally you can't with DocBook markup.  It isn't a page layout language,
so there is no way to express page layout in DocBook.  That is part of its
design, to separate content from formatting.  The stylesheet provides the
layout.  You could mark elements with role attributes and write a stylesheet
to lay out content according to role.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net





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