Subject: Texinfo support for Linuxdoc-SGML
From: [email-masked] (Matt Welsh)
To: Linux Documentation Project writers <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:25:46 EDT

Is anybody maintaining updates to Linuxdoc-SGML? Here is a prerelease
of texinfo support which seems to be ready. A few comments: (a) Math
mode isn't necessary; (b) It's okay with me if it only produces info 
files for viewing in Emacs or Info (not for formatting with TeX).

If someone would take over Linuxdoc-SGML to make new features like this
available, I would really appreciate it. I'm afraid that I lack the time to
do this well.

mdw

--

--- Forwarded mail from Christian Schwarz <[email-masked]>

>From [email-masked]  Thu May  4 12:28:37 1995
Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 18:21:32 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Christian Schwarz <[email-masked]>
To: Matt Welsh <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Linuxdoc-SGML for texinfo?
Status: OR

Hello!

Well, development on texinfo interface is going on and the first
results are very good:

	* Creation of menus/node structure is complete.

	* Cross references are complete.

	* Conversion of special characters is mostly done.

So one can read the first Linux HOWTO's via info now!

What still has to be done:

	* Math support (if necessary).

	* Some character replacements.

	* Some checks for duplicate node names, unresolved refs, etc.

	* Support for other document styles then article if necessary.

	* Some documentation   ;-)

I was thinking about how to create the texinfo files so that the
output is correctly on Info and printed documentation. I think
that the output in texinfo format should only be used for the
GNU info program/emacs Info mode and NOT for the printed manual. This
should be done with the standard Latex/Troff way. This simplifies
the creation of the texinfo files a lot. So the output type is
called `info' instead of `texinfo'.

I had to change the format script to get the file name of the sgml
source file. This is necessary for the info file! When the format
utility is invoked by
	format -Tinfo test.sgml
it automatically creates the files test.info, test.info-1, etc. So
this is a difference to the other output types that send their
output file to stdout.

(I haven't found a way to tell sgmls to convert all occurances of `@'
into `@@' so I inserted a sed call in format in case of info output
type.)

Well, this somehow is the first ALPHA-PRE-RELEASE 0.001  :-) 
I just wanted to tell you the status of the conversion utility. If
you have some time you can play with the version I send you here or
give it to someone who wants to test it. Please send all comments
and bug reports to me. I think that this is not a version for distribution
at the moment. I will be working on it the next days.

By the way, could you please give me a hint where I can find the
sgml sources for the Linux HOWTOs/FAQs for testing my conversion
utility? I can't find them on sunsite/tsx-11.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

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--
Christian Schwarz
[email-masked], [email-masked]

--- End of forwarded message from Christian Schwarz <[email-masked]>