DOCBOOK: docbook suitable for book - creation ?

[Peter Wilm <listen at peterwilm dot de>]

Hi,
The literature for docbook - newbies (e.g. DocBook: The Definitive
Guide) concentrates on the creation of the structured content.
However, as I consider learning docbook for writing my thesis, I would
also like to know how to produce a printed version of the book. I do
have highly specific constraints regarding the Layout: e.g. the size
of the left / right page margin, etc.
So the layout is specified in the stylesheet, which is written in XSL
or DSSL, I suppose ?
Is there any online literature suitable for beginners ?
So, if I want to create a suitable layout for my thesis - not for 
some thesis - but to fullfill the specifications that *I* got - will
it be easy to learn to write the stylesheet (i.e. in a few days) ?
With LaTeX everything seems clear to me - but the switch LaTeX ->
docbook is a bit difficult if you have to print the XML - document to
a PDF file in a concrete specified Layout ?
I got the impression that layout doesn't matter to the docbook
community... Thank you very much for any help!
Peter.