Many thanks for your reply! I would certainly go this way having a couple of months or a year perspective. Besides I'm eager to try finally the new way mkIV deals with xml. But realistically, preparing and testing a mapping of even a subset of DocBook is a question of at least a couple of personmonths if not worse. Sadly, I'm not in a position to that now. Best Piotr 2011/6/2 Thomas Schmitz :

On Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:39:46 +0200  Piotr Kopszak wrote:

...

Dear list,

I am beginning a rather tedious documentation project and will most  probably end up with DocBook. The fact is I haven't used it for any  serious work for about 10 years. Docbook In ConText haven't been  updated since 2003. Does it mean it's so perfect or instead rather  obsolete? Could you recommend other approaches which work  out-of-the-box (or almost). Obviously I would prefer ConTeXt based  solutions. DocBook is not mandatory in fact, I would happily learn  other  documentation system. Main prerequisite is utf-8 output at least in  pdf and html and sensible defaults (this time I don't want to be a  typographer, nor I want to fiddle with structure).

 Best

 Piotr  --  http://okle.pl

Difficult to say of course without knowing the complexity of your documents, but just a few thoughts: if you're referring to Simon Pepping's "Docbook in ConTeXt," this was targeted at mkii, so it will probably still work, but could be considered obsolete. xml support in mkiv has changed a lot, but is much more powerful and flexible. It's fairly easy to write a stylesheet to translate your xml for typesetting, so I would look at the relevant xml documentation (like xml-mkiv.pdf) and make a fresh start. You can always refine and elaborate things as you go, and if you really hit a wall, there's the list.

Thomas ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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-- http://okle.pl

Hans Hagen writes:

On 2-6-2011 12:53, Piotr Kopszak wrote:

...

Many thanks for your reply! I would certainly go this way having a couple of months or a year perspective. Besides I'm eager to try finally the new way mkIV deals with xml. But realistically, preparing and testing a mapping of even a subset of DocBook is a question of at least a couple of personmonths if not worse. Sadly, I'm not in a position to that now.

Months? I never had a reason for doing a docbook mapping but a couple of hours should get you a start. Th eonly reason why I'd look into docbook is if I'd need in in a project. (I'd happily spent a few well paid months on it then.)

You probably don't need all of docbook, so you could start with some simple tests. The mkii docbook stuff you mentioned definitely is doing a small subset.

I never understand why you would try to typeset XML directly in ConTeXt? Why not just convert the DocBook to ConTeXt source using XSLT (or if the docs are simpler, use markdown with pandoc and you can easily get ConTeXt and HTML from the same source)? Bruce

I tried typesetting docbook with Context, it can be done, I but got stuck on the cals tables and some other things. Cals tables can be processed, albeit as separate documents only - not as part of the docbook file - and then imported as pdf files. This was too cumbersome for me, and does not agree with the tex philosophy. I therefore gave up. For some reason finetuning of, for example, the positioning of graphics, and headers as widows is more difficult than in a context document, at least I got this impression. Robert Op 2 jun 2011, om 22:20 heeft Hans Hagen het volgende geschreven:

On 2-6-2011 7:17, Bruce wrote:

...

Hans Hagen writes:

...

On 2-6-2011 12:53, Piotr Kopszak wrote:

...

Many thanks for your reply! I would certainly go this way having a couple of months or a year perspective. Besides I'm eager to try finally the new way mkIV deals with xml. But realistically, preparing and testing a mapping of even a subset of DocBook is a question of at least a couple of personmonths if not worse. Sadly, I'm not in a position to that now.

Months? I never had a reason for doing a docbook mapping but a couple of hours should get you a start. Th eonly reason why I'd look into docbook is if I'd need in in a project. (I'd happily spent a few well paid months on it then.)

You probably don't need all of docbook, so you could start with some simple tests. The mkii docbook stuff you mentioned definitely is doing a small subset.

I never understand why you would try to typeset XML directly in ConTeXt? Why not just convert the DocBook to ConTeXt source using XSLT (or if the docs are simpler, use markdown with pandoc and you can easily get ConTeXt and HTML from the same source)?

(1) because xslt mappings can become pretty unreadable (2) because you still need to make a file (and define environments) (3) because it then create another depencency and intermediate processing stage (4) because sometimes it makes sense to let the typesetting engine make decisions (5) because in mkiv one can apply lua functions to xml content (6) ...

anyhow, the whole idea of xml is that it can be processed by whatever machinery (and using xslt and/or xsl-fo for everything kin dof contradicts that)

Hans

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Op 3 jun 2011, om 18:28 heeft Hans Hagen het volgende geschreven:

On 3-6-2011 5:43, R. Ermers wrote:

...

I tried typesetting docbook with Context, it can be done, I but got stuck on the cals tables and some other things. Cals tables can be processed, albeit as separate documents only - not as part of the docbook file - and then imported as pdf files. This was too cumbersome for me, and does not agree with the tex philosophy. I therefore gave up.

we process docs with cals tables here

Yes, you surely do. Adding the prefix cals: to the tag names (thus making the file invalid, which is contrary to the docbook philosophy), using the cals table module and the directives is not enough, at least the cals tables in my valid xml docbook document were never typeset. With help from Aditya I managed to typeset a document which contains merely a cals table. I then thought this was going to be the first step to processing my xml file which contains a number of tables. But alas ... The tables in my document were skipped like any other unknown xml tag. I must have done something wrong. But what? There were no replies to my postings. In the end I felt silly for daring to posing a problem other people apparently had no problems with whatsoever. So, if you should embark on this track, be aware that typesetting xml is more complicated than a ConTeXt document, that the knowledge about it is not widespread yet, that you rely on the happy few who do know, and it may take a lot of time to find out things yourself. Robert

...

For some reason finetuning of, for example, the positioning of graphics, and headers as widows is more difficult than in a context document, at least I got this impression.

the same renderer is used so it should be the same

Hans

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Op 4 jun 2011, om 11:06 heeft Hans Hagen het volgende geschreven:

On 4-6-2011 10:21, R. Ermers wrote:

...

Adding the prefix cals: to the tag names (thus making the file invalid, which is contrary to the docbook philosophy), using the cals table module and the directives is not enough, at least the cals tables in my valid xml docbook document were never typeset.

can be any prefix (namespace) ... the code that implements it uses a namespace in order to avoid a mixup

...

With help from Aditya I managed to typeset a document which contains merely a cals table. I then thought this was going to be the first step to processing my xml file which contains a number of tables. But alas ....

The tables in my document were skipped like any other unknown xml tag. I must have done something wrong. But what? There were no replies to my postings. In the end I felt silly for daring to posing a problem other people apparently had no problems with whatsoever.

well, providing solutions for specific user cases depends on available time etc ... even making a simple example ...

...

So, if you should embark on this track, be aware that typesetting xml is more complicated than a ConTeXt document, that the knowledge about it is not widespread yet, that you rely on the happy few who do know, and it may take a lot of time to find out things yourself.

sure, and eventually it will be covered by manuals (or test files in the test suite -- actually there are some xml ones in there) ... there's only so much you can expect for a free system so some patience is needed

ps. although a lot of help can be gotten from this list, the wiki etc, users who want to do complex things (or workflows) cannot expect all their problems to be solved here as we all have jobs to fulfill ... it might help to make wiki pages and let others fill in the gaps

Of course, I agree that typesetting a xml docbook in itself is a complex matter. And yes, I read every single letter of the complex xml manuals. I also agree that people no doubt have many other things to do, including myself. Anybody working with Context and TeX must bear in mind that his problems will not be solved immediately, that knowledgeable people will voluntarily look into questions and problems, depending on their time and their interest in specific problems. However, on the other hand since docbook is a very well known and therefore attractive standard, and most problems in xml can be described quite straightforward. As a result the problem of typesetting cals tables cannot be depicted as a 'specific user case'. After all, there is a module cals tables, and it is expected to work. The problem was: how can I typeset a cals table with a minimal installation? Comparable to: how do I typeset a header? What settings are needed apart from the module? This should not be a 'complex' problem. My conclusion remains that the knowledge on xml is not widespread, that those who possess the knowledge do not always have time to help, and as a result my problem was not solved. For the record: note that my problem was not of the type: how to discard the nth line of a cals table? How to color the header of a cals table? Or how to only typeset cals tables with id="abc". Robert

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Op 4 jun 2011, om 14:24 heeft Aditya Mahajan het volgende geschreven:

On Jun 4, 2011, at 5:06 AM, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

On 4-6-2011 10:21, R. Ermers wrote:

...

Adding the prefix cals: to the tag names (thus making the file invalid, which is contrary to the docbook philosophy), using the cals table module and the directives is not enough, at least the cals tables in my valid xml docbook document were never typeset.

can be any prefix (namespace) ... the code that implements it uses a namespace in order to avoid a mixup

IIRC, the namespace was hardcoded in the parser (or the call to the parser). Robert's trouble with the cals table could have been resolved if there were a user option to set (or disable) the cals namespace.

Well, I added "cals:" to all tags for ConteXt purposes (<tbody>, <entry> become cals:tbody, cals:entry, etc.). I examined what Hans' example tables look like. After the changes, the structure was still that of a cals table, the word cals had been added to each tag, but after this adapation to some particular ConTeXt requirements, the tables in fact could not be called cals tables anymore. The file did no longer comply with the docbook dtd. I didn't mind that much. Predictably, though, my docbook editing software started complaining. The tables were not rendered in the preview anymore. This was a relatively minor problem. I don't know whether Aditya's suggestion would have helped. Robert

Aditya ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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