Ubuntu Manpage: db2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML

NAME

       db2x_texixml - Make Texinfo files from Texi-XML

SYNOPSIS

       db2x_texixml [options]... [xml-document]

DESCRIPTION

       db2x_texixml converts a Texi-XML document into one or more Texinfo documents.

       If xml-document is not given, then the document to convert comes from standard input.

       The filenames of the Texinfo documents are determined by markup in the Texi-XML source. (If the filenames
       are  not  specified  in  the markup, then db2x_texixml attempts to deduce them from the name of the input
       file. However, the Texi-XML source should specify the filename, because it does not work when  there  are
       multiple output files or when the Texi-XML source comes from standard input.)

OPTIONS

--encoding=encoding
Select the character encoding used for the output files. The available encodings are those of
iconv(1). The default encoding is us-ascii.

The XML source may contain characters that are not representable in the encoding that you select;
in this case the program will bomb out during processing, and you should choose another encoding.
(This is guaranteed not to happen with any Unicode encoding such as UTF-8, but unfortunately not
everyone is able to process Unicode texts.)

If you are using GNU’s version of iconv(1), you can affix //TRANSLIT to the end of the encoding
name to attempt transliterations of any unconvertible characters in the output. Beware, however,
that the really inconvertible characters will be turned into another of those damned question
marks. (Aren’t you sick of this?)

The suffix //TRANSLIT applied to a Unicode encoding — in particular, utf-8//TRANSLIT — means that
the output files are to remain in Unicode, but markup-level character translations using utf8trans
are still to be done. So in most cases, an English-language document, converted using --encod‐
ing=utf-8//TRANSLIT will actually end up as a US-ASCII document, but any untranslatable characters
will remain as UTF-8 without any warning whatsoever. (Note: strictly speaking this is not
“transliteration”.) This method of conversion is a compromise over strict --encoding=us-ascii
processing, which aborts if any untranslatable characters are encountered.

Note that man pages and Texinfo documents in non-ASCII encodings (including UTF-8) may not be
portable to older (non-internationalized) systems, which is why the default value for this option
is us-ascii.

To suppress any automatic character mapping or encoding conversion whatsoever, pass the option
--encoding=utf-8.

--list-files
Write a list of all the output files to standard output, in addition to normal processing.

--output-dir=dir
Specify the directory where the output files are placed. The default is the current working di‐
rectory.

This option is ignored if the output is to be written to standard output (triggered by the option
--to-stdout).

--to-stdout
Write the output to standard output instead of to individual files.

If this option is used even when there are supposed to be multiple output documents, then every‐
thing is concatenated to standard output. But beware that most other programs will not accept
this concatenated output.

This option is incompatible with --list-files, obviously.

--info Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo(1), creating Info files directly instead of Texinfo files.

--plaintext
Pipe the Texinfo output to makeinfo --no-headers, thereby creating plain text files.

--help Show brief usage information and exit.

--version
Show version and exit.

This program uses certain other programs for its operation. If they are not in their default installed
locations, then use the following options to set their location:

--utf8trans-program=path, --utf8trans-map=charmap
Use the character map charmap with the utf8trans(1) program, included with docbook2X, found under
path.

--iconv-program=path
The location of the iconv(1) program, used for encoding conversions.

NOTES

Texinfo language compatibility. The Texinfo files generated by db2x_texixml sometimes require Texinfo
version 4.7 (the latest version) to work properly. In particular:

• db2x_texixml relies on makeinfo to automatically add punctuation after a @ref if it it not already
there. Otherwise the hyperlink will not work in the Info reader (although makeinfo will not emit any
error).

• The new @comma{} command is used for commas (,) occurring inside argument lists to Texinfo commands, to
disambiguate it from the comma used to separate different arguments. The only alternative otherwise
would be to translate , to . which is obviously undesirable (but earlier docbook2X versions did this).

If you cannot use version 4.7 of makeinfo, you can still use a sed script to perform manually the pro‐
cedure just outlined.

Relation of Texi-XML with the XML output format of makeinfo. The Texi-XML format used by docbook2X is
different and incompatible with the XML format generated by makeinfo(1) with its --xml option. This sit‐
uation arose partly because the Texi-XML format of docbook2X was designed and implemented independently
before the appearance of makeinfo’s XML format. Also Texi-XML is very much geared towards being machine-
generated from other XML formats, while there seems to be no non-trivial applications of makeinfo’s XML
format. So there is no reason at this point for docbook2X to adopt makeinfo’s XML format in lieu of
Texi-XML.

BUGS

       • Text wrapping in menus is utterly broken for non-ASCII text.  It is  probably  also  broken  everywhere
         else in the output, but that would be makeinfo’s fault.

       • --list-files might not work correctly with --info. Specifically, when the output Info file get too big,
         makeinfo  will  decide to split it into parts named abc.info-1, abc.info-2, abc.info-3, etc.  db2x_tex‐
         ixml does not know exactly how many of these files there are, though you can just do an ls to find out.

AUTHOR

       Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.