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<h2 class="title"><a id="faq" name="faq"></a>FAQ</h2>
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</div>
<a id="id2539312" class="indexterm" name="id2539312"></a><a id=
"id2539319" class="indexterm" name="id2539319"></a><a id=
"id2539325" class="indexterm" name="id2539325"></a><a id=
"id2539332" class="indexterm" name="id2539332"></a>
<div class="qandaset">
<dl>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2539951">I have a SGML DocBook document.
How do I use docbook2X?</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2539993">docbook2X bombs with this
document!</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540024">Must I use refentry to write my
man pages?</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540103">Where have the SGML-based
docbook2X tools gone?</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540121">I get some iconv error when
converting documents.</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540201">Texinfo output looks
ugly.</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540235">How do I use SAXON (or
Xalan-Java) with docbook2X?</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540311">XML catalogs don’t work
with Xalan-Java. (Or: Stop connecting to the Internet when running
docbook2X!)</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540350">I don’t like how
docbook2X renders this markup.</a></dt>
<dt>Q: <a href="faq.html#id2540402">Does docbook2X support other
XML document types or output formats?</a></dt>
</dl>
<table border="0" summary="Q and A Set">
<col align="left" width="1%" />
<tbody>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2539951" name=
"id2539951"></a><a id="id2539953" name=
"id2539953"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>I have a SGML DocBook document. How do I use docbook2X?</p>
<a id="id2539960" class="indexterm" name="id2539960"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Use the <code class="option">--sgml</code> option to
<span><strong class="command">db2x_xsltproc</strong></span>.</p>
<p>(Formerly, we described a quite intricate hack here to convert
to SGML to XML while preserving the ISO entities. That hack is
actually what <code class="option">--sgml</code> does.)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2539993" name=
"id2539993"></a><a id="id2539995" name=
"id2539995"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>docbook2X bombs with this document!</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>It is probably a bug in docbook2X. (Assuming that the input
document is valid DocBook in the first place.) Please file a bug
report. In it, please include the document which causes docbook2X
to fail, or a pointer to it, or a test case that reproduces the
problem.</p>
<p>I don’t want to hear about bugs in obsolete tools (i.e.
tools that are not in the current release of docbook2X.) I’m
sorry, but maintaining all that is a lot of work that I don’t
have time for.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540024" name=
"id2540024"></a><a id="id2540027" name=
"id2540027"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Must I use <code class="sgmltag-element">refentry</code> to
write my man pages?</p>
<a id="id2540039" class="indexterm" name="id2540039"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Under the default settings of docbook2X: yes, you have to. The
contents of the source document that lie outside of <code class=
"sgmltag-element">refentry</code> elements are probably written in
a book/article style that is usually not suited for the reference
style of man pages.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, sometimes you might want to include inside your
man page, (small) snippets or sections of content from other parts
of your book or article. You can achieve this by using a custom
XSLT stylesheet to include the content manually. The docbook2X
documentation demonstrates this technique: see the <span class=
"citerefentry"><span class=
"refentrytitle">docbook2man</span></span> and the <span class=
"citerefentry"><span class=
"refentrytitle">docbook2texi</span></span> man pages and the
stylesheet that produces them in <code class=
"filename">doc/ss-man.xsl</code>.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540103" name=
"id2540103"></a><a id="id2540105" name=
"id2540105"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Where have the SGML-based docbook2X tools gone?</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>They are in a separate package now, docbook2man-sgmlspl.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540121" name=
"id2540121"></a><a id="id2540123" name=
"id2540123"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>I get some <span><strong class="command">iconv</strong></span>
error when converting documents.</p>
<a id="id2540135" class="indexterm" name="id2540135"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>It's because there is some Unicode character in your document
that docbook2X fails to convert to ASCII or a markup escape (in
roff or Texinfo). The error message is intentional because it
alerts you to a possible loss of information in your document,
although admittedly it could be less cryptic, but I unfortunately
can't control what <span><strong class=
"command">iconv</strong></span> says.</p>
<p>You can look at the partial man or Texinfo output — the
offending Unicode character should be near the point that the
output is interrupted. Since you probably wanted that Unicode
character to be there, the way you want to fix this error is to add
a translation for that Unicode character to the
<span><strong class="command">utf8trans</strong></span> character
map. Then use the <code class="option">--utf8trans-map</code>
option to the Perl docbook2X tools to use your custom character
map.</p>
<p>Alternatively, if you want to close your eyes to the utterly
broken Unicode handling in groff and Texinfo, just use the
<code class="option">--encoding=utf-8</code> option. Note that the
UTF-8 output is unlikely to display correctly everywhere.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540201" name=
"id2540201"></a><a id="id2540203" name=
"id2540203"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Texinfo output looks ugly.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>You have to keep in mind that Info is extremely limited in its
formatting. Try setting the various parameters to the stylesheet
(see <code class="filename">xslt/texi/param.xsl</code>).</p>
<p>Also, if you look at native Info pages, you will see there is a
certain structure, that your DocBook document may not adhere to.
There is really no fix for this. It is possible, though, to give
rendering hints to the Texinfo stylesheet in your DocBook source,
like this this manual does. Unfortunately these are not yet
documented in a prominent place.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540235" name=
"id2540235"></a><a id="id2540237" name=
"id2540237"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>How do I use SAXON (or Xalan-Java) with docbook2X?</p>
<a id="id2540244" class="indexterm" name="id2540244"></a><a id=
"id2540250" class="indexterm" name="id2540250"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Bob Stayton’s <em class="citetitle">DocBook XSL: The
Complete Guide</em> has a nice <a href=
"http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/InstallingAProcessor.html"
target="_top">section on setting up the XSLT processors</a>. It
talks about Norman Walsh’s DocBook XSL stylesheets, but for
docbook2X you only need to change the stylesheet argument (any file
with the extension <code class="filename">.xsl</code>).</p>
<p>If you use the Perl wrapper scripts provided with docbook2X, you
only need to “install” the XSLT processors (i.e. for
Java, copying the <code class="filename">*.jar</code> files to
<code class="filename">/usr/local/share/java</code>), and you
don’t need to do anything else.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540311" name=
"id2540311"></a><a id="id2540313" name=
"id2540313"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>XML catalogs don’t work with Xalan-Java. (Or: Stop
connecting to the Internet when running docbook2X!)</p>
<a id="id2540322" class="indexterm" name="id2540322"></a><a id=
"id2540329" class="indexterm" name="id2540329"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>I have no idea why — XML catalogs with Xalan-Java
don’t work for me either, no matter how hard I try. Just go
use SAXON or libxslt instead (which do work for me at least).</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540350" name=
"id2540350"></a><a id="id2540352" name=
"id2540352"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>I don’t like how docbook2X renders this markup.</p>
<a id="id2540359" class="indexterm" name="id2540359"></a><a id=
"id2540366" class="indexterm" name="id2540366"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>The XSLT stylesheets are customizable, so assuming you have
knowledge of XSLT, you should be able to change the rendering
easily. See <code class="filename">doc/ss-texinfo.xsl</code> of
docbook2X’s own documentation for a non-trivial example.</p>
<p>If your customizations can be generally useful, I would like to
hear about it.</p>
<p>If you don't want to muck with XSLT, you can still tell me what
sort of features you want. Maybe other users want them too.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="question">
<td align="left" valign="top"><a id="id2540402" name=
"id2540402"></a><a id="id2540404" name=
"id2540404"></a><b>Q:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>Does docbook2X support other XML document types or output
formats?</p>
<a id="id2540411" class="indexterm" name="id2540411"></a><a id=
"id2540418" class="indexterm" name="id2540418"></a><a id=
"id2540425" class="indexterm" name="id2540425"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="answer">
<td align="left" valign="top"><b>A:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<p>No. But if you want to create code for a new XML document type
or output format, the existing infrastructure of docbook2X may be
able to help you.</p>
<p>For example, if you want to convert a document in the W3C spec
DTD to Texinfo, you can write a XSLT stylesheet that outputs a
document conformant to the Texi-XML, and run that through
<span><strong class="command">db2x_texixml</strong></span> to get
your Texinfo pages. Writing the said XSLT stylesheet should not be
any more difficult than if you were to write a stylesheet for HTML
output, in fact probably even easier.</p>
<p>An alternative approach is to convert the source document to
DocBook first, then apply docbook2X conversion afterwards. The
stylesheet reference documentation in docbook2X uses this
technique: the documentation embedded in the XSLT stylesheets is
first extracted into a DocBook document, then that is converted to
Texinfo. This approach obviously is not ideal if the source
document does not map well into DocBook, but it does allow you to
use the standard DocBook HTML and XSL-FO stylesheets to format the
source document with little effort.</p>
<p>If you want, on the other hand, to get troff output but using a
different macro set, you will have to rewrite both the stylesheets
and the post-processor (performing the function of
<span><strong class="command">db2x_manxml</strong></span> but with
a different macro set). In this case some of the code in
<span><strong class="command">db2x_manxml</strong></span> may be
reused, and you can certainly reuse <span><strong class=
"command">utf8trans</strong></span> and the provided roff character
maps.</p>
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