Truman BoyesZeros & Ones

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learning docbook

By Truman Boyes · · 1 min read

lately started learning DocBook to write a book about network automation. Writing the XML in TextMate; processing with xsltproc, and now just getting into Apache FOP to format into PDF.

At first the whole concept of learning DocBook seemed daunting; each time I thought I had learned all the tools necessary to get the job done, I would then find that I needed another tool and then I need to learn the in’s and out’s of yet another tool. However, I have things working now. I am able to create HTML and PDF files on my MacBookPro running 10.4 by using the following tools:

  • Apache FOP (makes PDF files from .FO files)
  • TextMate (for writing XML)
  • DocBook stylesheets
  • xsltproc (comes with OS X, and used to process XML files with stylesheets)
  • GNU Make (I use this to automate the building process of files)

Will post more details as I start to grasp the formatting capabilities. I may need to create my own stylesheets at some point if I want to have more editorial control of the layout and look of the book.

Originally published on truman.net. See the archived copy.