Re: Getting indexes?

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

Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> 
> Well, recomendations on SGML just went out to the LSB this week (err, maybe
> before the weekend, I forget).  Hopefully those will get things a bit more
> standardized.

Hopefully. I don't have any feedback yet.

>  I don't use the output from my stuff too often, so I'm not
> sure how to resolve those issues.  You can use LyX and export to Docbook,
> but I'm not sure how that works.  I just noticed that DocBook 4.0 is
> official, guess it's time to move to XML.  (As of DB4, XML is official)

Yes, and thanks to Norman Walsh, it comes with XSL style
sheets.

> I have to agree that the tools that do exist aren't very well put together
> to get you up and running (although with a bit of work, it's do-able).

We have spent some time on rewriting them in a new project
called "docbook-utils" that should if Mark accepts become
part of the DocBook tools. I am waiting for Mark Galassi's
green light to put them on the DocBook-tools FTP server at
Sourceware, along with a new "LSB-proposals-conformant"
packaging (which does, by the way, put collateindex.pl in
/usr/bin ;-) ).

> What's a MUCH bigger concern to me is the lack of tools to do anything
> except process the DocBook source into other formats.  What about using
> DocBook to enhance searches?  How about and OO database?  What about
> indexing the document into a larger collection?  I don't see any tools for
> these yet.  I've got some ideas about how do to a couple of those, but
> they're kinda slow in taking shape.

Yes.

We already added a script, sgmldiff.pl, to compare the
markup of two SGML files, regardless of the text between the
tags. It's really precious for translations - now I even
wonder how we could have been living without it at KDE.

I have on the TODO list for docbook-utils list :
- conversion from legacy input formats (texinfo, linuxdoc,
...)
- wrapper for collateindex.pl.
- extraction of the contents of a given tag from command
line
  (precious for <releaseinfo>, <keyword>, <date>, ...)
  (more SGML-aware than a simple "grep")
It seems to rejoin pretty much what you are requesting ;-).
I already have people volunterring for the first two points,
and I might write the third one.

We just have set up a docbook-utils@bazar.conectiva.com.br
developers mailing list to accelerate the development.

-- 
 Éric Bischoff   -   mailto:ebisch@cybercable.tm.fr
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