Re: [NTG-context] ConTeXt and DocBook - beginner's questions

phthenry@iglou.com said this at Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:17:29 -0500:

As the author of the second page concedes, you need somewhat complicated syntax to directly map XML to ConTeXt. Many of the examples mix XML and non XML.

You guys are aware of foXet, right? That's ConTeXt's XSL-FO processor module. As part of writing that module, Hans really streamlined the XML mapping to TeX commands. As a result, I'm becoming more and more of a fan of a streamlined XML markup that works in parallel with the ConTeXt idiom. Hans began that with ContML, a simplified XML structure for basic documents, mirroring familiar ConTeXt commands (take a look at the x- contml.tex source). He enabled a lot more with the tricks features in This Way #9 (the magazine link). I extended ContML a little more using those foXet tricks with my t-oo-03 module. It was primarily intended to process XSLT-mediated output from a GUI Outline editor, but the underlying format seems like a good jumping- off point for other formats as well. http://oo2contml.sourceforge.net/ http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/oo2contml/oo2contml-source.zip (I didn't put too much effort into making my code readable, but I hope it gives an idea of how easily XML parameters can be changed into ConTeXt parameters. I can provide sample documents to interested people to show the general XML format.) I plan on documenting the ConTeXt/XML side (rather than the user side) of it a bit more, but I'm a bit over-committed, at the moment!

There is a solution that I personally think is simpler, TeXML. In this method, you convert TEI (or other forms of XML) to TeXML, a specialized form of XML. You then run the TeXML processor, which converts this to a plain old ConTeXt document. The advantage of this method is that you are converting from an XML tree to an XML tree, which is always easier than converting from XML to text.

That's nice. I wasn't aware of that project before. The format looks superficially similar to Hans's foXet extensions.

I am working on a document that explains how to convert XML to ConTeXt. The document will explain how to one would do something in FO and then how you would do the same in ConTeXt. It will be a rough document because I am just learning myself, but it will be a start.

Oh, nice... I look forward to seeing that. Sounds like a good My Way candidate at some point. adam

-----Original Message----- From: Radoslaw Moszczynski To: ntg-context@ntg.nl Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:34:41 +0100 Subject: [NTG-context] ConTeXt and DocBook - beginner's questions

...

Hello everyone,

I am new to ConTeXt (I've been tempted to try it out because of a message by Sebastian Rahtz, posted on TEI-L). I admit that so far I have been able to get through only the main manual, but I am very curious about some things and therefore I would really appreciate it if you could answer my questions:

1. I am interested in authoring in XML and than typesetting in ConTeXt. Are there any preferences towards using some particular markup language for typesetting in ConTeXt? Is e.g. using DocBook more preferable that using TEI--from the point of view of typesetting in ConTeXt, of course.

2. Are there any generic tools available (stylesheets etc.) for typesetting DocBook/TEI or does one have to come up with his own stylesheets? I assume that the latter is necessary if one wants to get exactly the layout he wants, but maybe there are some basic stylesheets that one can use as a base for his own ones?

3. Also, I have a more general question -- for some (short) period of time I have been reading both TEI-L and NTG-CONTEXT, all the issues related to typesetting documents marked up in XML are very confusing. Do you know any good manual/tutorial concerned with these issues that I could use a starting point for my studies on the subject?

Thank you in advance-

-Radek Moszczynski _______________________________________________ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context

_______________________________________________ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context

-- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept. atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk Lancaster University, InfoLab21 +44(0)1524/510.514 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-