<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta name="generator" content= "HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 1 September 2005), see www.w3.org" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= "text/html; charset=us-ascii" /> <title>docbook2X: Converting to man pages</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="docbook2X.css" type="text/css" /> <link rev="made" href="mailto:stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net" /> <meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.68.1" /> <meta name="description" content= "Details on man-page conversion" /> <link rel="start" href="docbook2X.html" title= "docbook2X: Documentation Table of Contents" /> <link rel="up" href="docbook2X.html" title= "docbook2X: Documentation Table of Contents" /> <link rel="prev" href="docbook2X.html" title= "docbook2X: Documentation Table of Contents" /> <link rel="next" href="docbook2man.html" title= "docbook2X: docbook2man" /> </head> <body> <div class="navheader"> <table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"> <tr> <th colspan="3" align="center">Converting to man pages</th> </tr> <tr> <td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href= "docbook2X.html"><< Previous</a> </td> <th width="60%" align="center"> </th> <td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href= "docbook2man.html">Next >></a></td> </tr> </table> <hr /></div> <div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <div class="titlepage"> <div> <div> <h2 class="title"><a id="manpages" name="manpages"></a>Converting to man pages</h2> </div> </div> </div> <a id="id2476295" class="indexterm" name="id2476295"></a><a id= "id2476302" class="indexterm" name="id2476302"></a><a id= "id2476309" class="indexterm" name="id2476309"></a><a id= "id2476315" class="indexterm" name="id2476315"></a> <p>DocBook documents are converted to man pages in two steps:</p> <div class="orderedlist"> <ol type="1"> <li> <p>The DocBook source is converted by a XSLT stylesheet into an intermediate XML format, Man-XML.</p> <p>Man-XML is simpler than DocBook and closer to the man page format; it is intended to make the stylesheets’ job easier.</p> <p>The stylesheet for this purpose is in <code class= "filename">xslt/man/docbook.xsl</code>. For portability, it should always be referred to by the following URI:</p> <pre class="synopsis"> http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/latest/xslt/man/docbook.xsl </pre> <p>Run this stylesheet with <a href= "db2x_xsltproc.html"><span><strong class= "command">db2x_xsltproc</strong></span></a>.</p> <a id="id2476395" class="indexterm" name="id2476395"></a> <p><b>Customizing. </b> You can also customize the output by creating your own XSLT stylesheet — changing parameters or adding new templates — and importing <code class= "filename">xslt/man/docbook.xsl</code>.</p> </li> <li> <p>Man-XML is converted to the actual man pages by <a href= "db2x_manxml.html"><span><strong class= "command">db2x_manxml</strong></span></a>.</p> </li> </ol> </div> <p>The <a href="docbook2man.html" title= "docbook2X: docbook2man"><span><strong class= "command">docbook2man</strong></span></a> command does both steps automatically, but if any problems occur, you can see the errors more clearly if you do each step separately:</p> <pre class="screen"> <code class="prompt">$ </code><strong class= "userinput"><code>db2x_xsltproc -s man <em class= "replaceable"><code>mydoc</code></em>.xml -o <em class= "replaceable"><code>mydoc</code></em>.mxml</code></strong> <code class="prompt">$ </code><strong class= "userinput"><code>db2x_manxml <em class= "replaceable"><code>mydoc</code></em>.mxml</code></strong> </pre> <p>Options to the conversion stylesheet are described in <a href= "../xslt/documentation/docbook2man-xslt.html/docbook2man-xslt.html"> the man-pages stylesheets reference</a>.</p> <a id="id2523989" class="indexterm" name="id2523989"></a> <p><b>Pure XSLT conversion. </b> An alternative to the <span><strong class="command">db2x_manxml</strong></span> Perl script is the XSLT stylesheet in <code class= "filename">xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl</code>. This stylesheet performs a similar function of converting Man-XML to actual man pages. It is useful if you desire a pure XSLT solution to man-page conversion. Of course, the quality of the conversion using this stylesheet will never be as good as the Perl <span><strong class= "command">db2x_manxml</strong></span>, and it runs slower. In particular, the pure XSLT version currently does not support tables in man pages, but its Perl counterpart does. <span class="html">For instructions on how to use the stylesheet, see <a href= "xsltproc.html#xsltproc.db2x_manxml" title= "Example 1. Convert to man pages using pure-XSLT db2x_manxml"> Example 1, “Convert to man pages using pure-XSLT <span>db2x_manxml</span>”</a>.</span></p> </div> <div class="navfooter"> <hr /> <table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"> <tr> <td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href= "docbook2X.html"><< Previous</a> </td> <td width="20%" align="center"> </td> <td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href= "docbook2man.html">Next >></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">docbook2X </td> <td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href= "docbook2X.html">Table of Contents</a></td> <td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> docbook2man</td> </tr> </table> </div> <p class="footer-homepage"><a href= "http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/" title= "docbook2X: Home page">docbook2X home page</a></p> </body> </html>