The Linuxdoc-Tools package: <http://people.debian.org/~sano/linuxdoc-tools/>

LinuxDoc is a kind of SGML DTD. It was created for the Linux HOWTOs, and is
being used by the Linux Documentation Project (LDP).

Linuxdoc-Tools is in fact a small bug-fix version of SGML-Tools 1.0.9,
and is a toolset for processing LinuxDoc DTD SGML files. This is currently
maintained by Taketoshi Sano <sano@debian.org>.

SGML-Tools 1.0.9 is the last official release of SGML-Tools with direct 
support for LinuxDoc DTD.  More recent version of SGML-Tools 2.x and 
its successor, SGMLtools-Lite <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>
only supports the conversion from LinuxDoc DTD sgml into DocBook DTD.

But currently many HOWTO documents in LDP are still provided as 
LinuxDoc DTD sgml files, and many Linux users wish to use the tool
which converts LinuxDoc DTD sgml files into various format directly.

So I made a modification on SGML-Tools 1.0.9, and release the result
as a new branch in order to avoid the confusion with the SGML-Tools
and the SGMLTools-Lite.

Since Linuxdoc-Tools is a derivative of SGML-Tools 1.0.9, it has
almost the same functions of its predecessor.  It is a text-formatting 
package based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), which 
allows you to produce LaTeX, HTML, GNU info, LyX, RTF, and plain text
(via groff) from a single source;

Now old command form sgml2* is obsoleted and a single command
"linuxdoc" is the prefered form.

   Old (obsoleted)	  New (prefered)
 -------------------	-----------------
  sgml2txt		 linuxdoc -B txt
  sgml2html		 linuxdoc -B html
  sgml2info		 linuxdoc -B info
  sgml2latex		 linuxdoc -B latex
  sgml2lyx		 linuxdoc -B lyx
  sgml2rtf		 linuxdoc -B rtf
  sgmlcheck		 linuxdoc -B check

This system is tailored for LinuxDoc DTD sgml files, and other DTDs
are not supported.  If you need the tool for DocBook DTD (which is
now a more popular DTD than LinuxDoc in writing technical software 
documentation), then you should check SGMLTools-Lite, OpenJade,
and docbook-tools.  Check their Web sites below.

  SGMLTools-Lite: <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>

  OpenJade: <http://openjade.sourceforge.net/>

  docbook-tools: <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/docbook-tools/>

The file doc/guide.sgml is Linuxdoc DTD SGML source for the User's Guide,
originally written by Matt Welsh and updated by many people.

As you probably don't know how to format it yet, there is formatted plain 
text in doc/guide.txt.  There's also guide.dvi and guide.ps, if you wish
to print them instead.  The first thing you should read is doc/guide.txt, 
which explains how to install the software (namely, it tells you to
read the file INSTALL), and how to start writing documents with it.
The file doc/example.sgml is a simple example document which you can use 
as a tutorial.

Linuxdoc-Tools depends on the usage of the sgml parser from Jade or 
OpenJade (nsgmls or onsgmls). You have to install either of them.

Matt Welsh originally created the package under the name Linuxdoc-SGML,
using James Clark's sgmls parser and the QWERTZ DTD by Tom Gordon.
Then Greg Hankins maintained it.  It was renamed to SGML-Tools later,
and had been maintained by Cees de Groot <cg@cdegroot.com>.
SGML-Tools 2.x was significantly changed from 1.0.x, and it dropped 
the direct support of Linuxdoc DTD and adopted the support of the DocBook 
DTD using Jade.  SGMLtools-Lite is the latest branch from SGML-Tools 2.x, 
and it is  maintained by Cees at <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>.

This Linuxdoc-Tools is the branch from SGML-Tools 1.0.9, and its
focus is to provide the backward compatibility for users of the old
Linuxdoc DTD.

This branch uses patch from JF ("The Japanese FAQ Project") to support 
euc-jp encoded Japanese sgml file on sgml2txt, sgml2html, and sgml2latex.
(sgml2info, sgml2lyx, and sgml2rtf have no special on Japanese support.)

The JF patch for sgml-tools (v1) was originally written by Kazuyuki
Okamoto <ikko-@pacific.rim.or.jp> and Tetsu ONO <ono@jf.gee.kyoto-u.ac.jp>.
They tried to contribute their patch to the upstream, but they could not
success.  I am a member in JF project, and I have heard from them that
their patch can be used under the license of the original code.

The JF patch adds also a new DTD named "linuxdoctr", which is a variant
of "linuxdoc" with two more tags (<trans> and <tdate>, for the name of
the translator and for the date, time and version information of
the translation).  This is required by JF ("The Japanese FAQ Project", 
<http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/>) because the activity in JF includes the
translation of LDP documents into Japanese, and the translation may be
often revised for the same original revision.
Improvements in fmt_txt.pl (<tt> tags in <sect> do not harm in <toc>)
are also included in the original JF patch.

From version 0.3.7, I have merged pdf patch written by Juan Jose Amor 
<jjamor@hispalinux.es> for sgml-tools 1.0.9.  This patch is to use 
pdfLaTeX in sgml2latex to produce nice PDF files. I include the note
written by Juan at the end of this README, so please check it for this 
patch.

And I keep the old documents in old-docs/ subdirectory.  If you are 
interested in history, then please check there.

Please send me any questions or bug reports, as well as suggestions for 
improvement.

 === (copied from README.pdf written by Juan Jose Amor for his pdf patch) ===

GOOD PDFs WITH SGMLTOOLS and PDFLATEX
=====================================

Patch written by Juan Jose Amor, <jjamor@hispalinux.es> on January 2000.

Easy to use:

sgml2latex [other options] -o pdf yourfile.sgml

I've tested it with language and charset options. And it works!

That is, my test command line was:

linuxdoc -B latex -l es -c latin -o pdf myfile.sgml

This patch has not been tested with other options such as bibtex
or makeindex. However, it may be used to generate a nice PDF output for
HOWTO documents, with internal and external (URL) hyperlinks.

To generate an external hyperlink, please use the <htmlurl> tag in your
.sgml file.

Please, send comments about this patch to Juan Jose Amor,
<jjamor@hispalinux.es>. Don't flame, please :-)

and remember... use at your own risk!

 ===  (end of quotation from README.pdf) ===


$Id: README,v 1.2 2002/03/18 13:38:44 sano Exp $

 Taketoshi Sano <sano@debian.org>
