Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Docbook a barrier to doc efforts?

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Posted by Thomas Wendlandt on
I came to DocBook rather unwillingly. I decided to do the documentation part of a software project, and was just told "Please use DocBook!" It was hard for me to get into it, but I think it's worth it, as XML processing allows for varios target formats.
I would not yet call myself a professional in DocBook, but I'm trying to overcome the burden of transforming DocBook to PDF (I was a bit dissatisfied with FOP). I'm developing a set of xml handler classes in php, relying on only 2 php libraries: one for xml, one for pdf. No xslt, no in-between step to xml-fo.

You can try my work under: http://convee.de/docbook2pdf.php

Until now this can handle only a few basic elements, and it cannot handle any style sheets, everything hard-coded. As long as I concentrate on conversion to PDF, should I work on a css kind of style configuration?

I know there is still quite a lot to do. Please tell me, if you think this online transformation is faster than any Java/SAX/FOP transformation queue.

Is it worth working on this at all, or are there other such online services?