Re: Crash-course to DocBook

[Mark Johnson <mark@phy.duke.edu>]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Eric Bischoff wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm happy to announce the birth of the "Crash-Course to
> DocBook".
> 
> You can find it on http://public.lst.de/~eric
> 
> It is released under FDL. Feel free to make it evolve.
>
Great idea! So much to tell, so little time...

On the PSGML page
( http://www.lst.de/~eric/crash-course/HTML/emacs-psgml-mode-tips.html ) you
say 

"PSGML mode is for SGML DocBook. It does not support XML DocBook."

which isn't true. PSGML has an XML mode that works fine with DocBook. A
group of use it daily (w/ Emacs 20.7) with no problems at all. 

You only need to put something like this into your .emacs:

;; load xml-mode 
 (autoload 'xml-mode "psgml" "Major mode to edit XML files." t)
       (setq auto-mode-alist
       (append (list (cons "\\.xml\\'" 'xml-mode))
       auto-mode-alist)
 )

Along with the path to the declaration.

I started a page of Emacs/PSGML Tips, based on stuff I read in Bob Snee's
SGML CD chapter. It's here:

	http://ed.phy.duke.edu/xml/psgml-tips/index.html 

I'd be happy to contribute to your tutorial, as I already spend too much
time showing folks how to do this or that. 

Another idea would be to start a database of docbook-user FAQs, we already
have a number of Zope installations that would make it very easy to do
something like this. It would automatically be searchable, and indexed,
etc.


Does that sound useful to anyone?

Mark

> It has been made out of three documents:
> - David Rugge's "Crash-Course to DocBook" for KDE
> - Mark Galassi's "Introduction to DocBook"
> - My own Lunch&Learn presentation "Using DocBook at Caldera"
> with a lot of glue and reorganization (and a small waste
> basket - everything that was KDE-specific has been removed).
> 
> The purpose is to have a "tutorial" for newcomers to
> DocBook, to be used in conjunction with Norm's book which I
> see more as a reference manual.
> 
> I hope this helps.
> 
>