Re: DOCBOOK: Building books with variables in them

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

/ Richard Sharpe <sharpe@ns.aus.com> was heard to say:
| 1. pass parameters in from the command line so I can change things like 
|    the latest version through a command line switch
| 
|    Can I do this?

If I understand you right, you want the value of a command-line
parameter to appear in the printed book. You can't do that directly,
but with a little shell scripting, you can get what you want.

Create your book like this:

<!DOCTYPE book ... [
<!ENTITY version SYSTEM "version.sgm">
]>
<book>
...
<para>This is version &version;.</para>

And then write a little shell script wrapper or something that takes
a command line argument and writes it into the file "version.sgm".

| 2. Graphics look better on the printed page if they are scaled to 50-60
|    percent, but on a web site they look better as a thumbnail that the
|    user clicks on to get the full image.
| 
|    How can I arrange it so I get different things happening with HTML vs
|    PDF?

This is a little trickier. You can switch between PNG and EPS or something
like that easily, but if you want to add linking and thumbnails, you'll
probably need a little stylesheet customization.

| 3. Depending on who the documentation is for, I want different cover pages,
|    headers and footers, etc. 

Different stylesheet customization layers can do this for you.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | If you are hankering after
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | certainty, you are better advised
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee | to seek it in religion: the
                                   | stock-in-trade of science is not
                                   | certainty but doubt.--K.C. Cole