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DOCBOOK2MAN-SPEC.PL(1)					DOCBOOK2MAN-SPEC.PL(1)

NAME
       docbook2man-spec.pl - convert DocBook RefEntries	to man pages

SYNOPSIS
       sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl

       nsgmls [	sgml document ]| sgmlspl docbook2man-spec.pl

DESCRIPTION
       docbook2man  is	a sgmlspl spec file that produced man pages (using the
       -man macros) from DocBook RefEntry markup.

       The program reads ESIS produced by nsgmls (or other SGML	parsers)  from
       standard	input.	Markup not found in RefEntry is	discarded.

       Its  output, the	converted man pages, are written to the	current	direc-
       tory.  If RefMeta information is	not specified in a RefEntry, then  the
       man page	will be	written	to standard output.

       The file	manpage.links will also	be created, which contains any aliases
       of the manpages generated.  This	file is	in the format:

       <man page> <alias
       manpage>

       The manpage.refs	file keeps track of XRef references.  Note that	if the
       input document has any forward references, then docbook2man may have to
       be  invoked  twice  (the	 first	time updating manpage.refs) to resolve
       them.

REQUIREMENTS
       The SGMLSpm package from	 CPAN.	 This  package	includes  the  sgmlspl
       script that is also needed.

LIMITATIONS
       Trying docbook2man on non-DocBook or non-conformant SGML	results	in un-
       defined behavior. :-)

       This program is a slow, dodgy Perl script.

       This  program does not come close to supporting all the possible	markup
       in DocBook, and may produce wrong output	in some	cases  with  supported
       markup.

TO DO
       Obvious stuff:

        Fix  docbook2man  breakages  found  in	the test documents, especially
	 weird.sgml.

        Add new element handling and fix existing handling.  Be robust.

        Produce cleanest, readable man	output as possible (unlike some	 other
	 converters).	Follow	Linux man(7) convention.  As conversion	to man
	 pages is usually not done very	often, it is better to be  slower/more
	 complicated  than  to produce wrong output.  Also if someone wants to
	 give up using DocBook for whatever  reason,  the  last-converted  man
	 pages can then	be maintained manually.

        Make  it  faster.  I  think most of the speed problems	so far is with
	 parsing ESIS.	Rewrite	SGMLS.pm with C	and/or get input directly from
	 SP.

        Support other (human) languages.   But	 what  to  do  with  non-ASCII
	 charsets?   SGMLSpm  doesn't report them and roff does	not grok them.
	 [Comment: text	after enclosed lists (and SS blocks) will  break  doc-
	 book2man] If we do this, more people can use DocBook.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 1998-1999 Steve Cheng <steve@ggi-project.org>

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under  the  terms of the	GNU General Public License as published	by the
       Free Software Foundation; either	version	2, or  (at  your  option)  any
       later version.

       You should have received	a copy of the GNU General Public License along
       with  this  program; see	the file COPYING.  If not, please write	to the
       Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

			       11 February 2004		DOCBOOK2MAN-SPEC.PL(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=docbook2man-spec.pl&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+14.3.quarterly>

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