docbook: Thread: ldp-author-tools RPM package

Hello, all:

Intentionally cross-posted to discuss list and docbook list. Bear with me.

I have received a response from Tom "Spot" Callaway ####@####.#### 
who says he will help me put together an ldp-author-tools RPM package to 
make it easier for those people running Red Hat, Fedora, Mandrake, or other 
RPM-based distros to set up a comfortable working environment in which to 
create documentation for LDP. I would like your input as to the contents of 
this package, please.

As I see it, there are two important aspects to this: which files the RPM 
package contains, and on which packages it depends. The following is my 
first stab at it, based on my currently functional RHL-9 system (of course 
version numbers would need to be adjusted for other versions of RHL or 
Fedora or whatever, but I gotta start somewhere):

Files
=====
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/README
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/LDP-Author-Guide.html
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/makeoutput.sh
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/input/sgml/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/input/xml/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/html-single/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/html-multiple/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/pdf/
/usr/local/ldp-author-tools/stylesheets/1.18/ldp.dsl

Dependencies
============
docbook-dtds-1.0-17
docbook-style-dsssl-1.76-8
docbook-style-xsl-1.58.1-2
docbook-utils-0.6.12-5
libxml2-2.5.4-1
libxslt-1.0.27-3
openjade-1.3.1-12
sgml-common-0.6.3-14
xml-common-0.6.3-14

Did I miss anything? The theory here is to have a one-line command like 
"up2date ldp-author-tools" which will install a few files (just enough of 
an environment to allow for easy manipulation of documents) and the 
packages required to manage them.

Comments, feedback? When we agree on what is necessary, I'll give the list 
to Spot and get him to build our first RPM.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
####@####.####

At 13:35 11/17/2003, Kwan Lowe wrote:
>Yes, this would have saved me at least four hours. The DocBook guide is
>good, but all the packages are available under the stock RedHat official
>distribution. I spent a lot of time visiting websites for packages that I
>could have installed via up2date.

My experience exactly (save that I spent more hours), and the reason I 
wanted to create this package.

>Do you mean to build a single RPM with all these packages? If so, I'm not
>sure it's a good idea.

Not at all. I mean to create a package with the "files" and have it 
require, as dependencies, the other packages which already exist. This 
whole package should be less than 50KB, I guess.

>On a side note, in my Docbook learning quest I noticed that there are
>several Java based validators and editors. None that I saw were DocBook
>specific but did ease the pain somewhat until I got vi properly
>configured.

Can you suggest one that I might use? Also, what do you mean by getting vi 
"properly" configured? And since we're at it, is there any way to have vim 
close a tag for me? Kind of a bother to type <superlongtag> and then 
</superlongtag>, or 17 sequential <listitem> pairs...


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
####@####.####

On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 01:07:23PM -0600, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> 
> Files
> =====
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/README
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/LDP-Author-Guide.html
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/makeoutput.sh
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/input/sgml/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/input/xml/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/html-single/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/html-multiple/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/output/pdf/
> /usr/local/ldp-author-tools/stylesheets/1.18/ldp.dsl

I would suggest including a template, or two, and maybe examples of
howto build the templates with existing tools. Maybe even include the
LAG and build that as an example.
 
> Dependencies
> ============
> docbook-dtds-1.0-17
> docbook-style-dsssl-1.76-8
> docbook-style-xsl-1.58.1-2
> docbook-utils-0.6.12-5
> libxml2-2.5.4-1
> libxslt-1.0.27-3
> openjade-1.3.1-12
> sgml-common-0.6.3-14
> xml-common-0.6.3-14

RH8 has:

$ rpm -qa |grep docbook
docbook-dtd41-xml-1.0-7
docbook-style-xsl-1.50.0-3
docbook-utils-0.6.11-2
docbook-style-dsssl-1.76-6
docbook-dtds-1.0-14
docbook-utils-pdf-0.6.11-2

$ rpm -qa |grep xml    
libxml-1.8.17-5
docbook-dtd41-xml-1.0-7
libxml10-1.0.0-11
libxml2-2.4.23-1
xml-common-0.6.3-12

$ rpm -qa |grep sgml
sgml-common-0.6.3-12
 

Random thoughts ... 

I think you might have trouble making this fit in nicely with
Mandrake. I can't say for sure (never used it), but their packaging
scheme seems to have drifted significantly from the RH model, and RH
tradition.

Also, RH has occasionally changed package names, for example, all the
stylesheets used to be in docbook-stylesheets*rpm (not xsl and dsssl
versions as now). So there is no guarantee when they break this scheme
either.

The paths in ldp.dsl will probably change with every RH release, so
either the package/installer has to do this (maybe via perl somehow in
a post-install), or a good README, or whatever.

There is a LDP script called ldp_print for generating PDF's. This uses
htmlproc IIRC, which is Open Source but not GPL, again IIRC. This
might be nice to include. 

I am glad somebody is doing this! Great idea, and sorely needed.

-- 
Hal Burgiss
 

Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:

> Can you suggest one that I might use? Also, what do you mean by getting 
> vi "properly" configured? And since we're at it, is there any way to 
> have vim close a tag for me? Kind of a bother to type <superlongtag> and 
> then </superlongtag>, or 17 sequential <listitem> pairs...
> 
> 

I would greatly appreciate a gvim menu with docbook tags, but may be 
this is already available?

jdd


-- 
http://www.dodin.net
Me contacter avant d'envoyer une pièce jointe, merci.
Une chanteuse sur Toulouse?
http://valerie.dodin.net