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docbook2man(1)			    docbook2X			  docbook2man(1)

NAME
     docbook2man - Convert DocBook to man pages

SYNOPSIS
     docbook2man [options] xml-document

DESCRIPTION
     docbook2man converts the given DocBook XML document into man pages.  By de-
     fault, the man pages will be output to the current directory.

     Only  the	refentry content in the DocBook document is converted.	(To con-
     vert content outside of a refentry, stylesheet customization  is  required.
     See the docbook2X package for details.)

     The  docbook2man  command	is  a  wrapper	script for a two-step conversion
     process.  See the section "CONVERSION PROCESS" below for details.

OPTIONS
     The available options  are  essentially  the  union  of  the  options  from
     db2x_xsltproc(1) and db2x_manxml(1).

     Some commonly-used options are listed below:

     --encoding=encoding
	    Sets the character encoding of the output.

     --string-param parameter=value
	    Sets  a  stylesheet  parameter  (options  that affect how the output
	    looks).  See "Stylesheet parameters" below for the	parameters  that
	    can be set.

     --sgml
	    Accept an SGML source document as input instead of XML.

     --solinks
	    Make stub pages for alternate names for an output man page.

   STYLESHEET PARAMETERS
     uppercase-headings
	    Brief. Make headings uppercase?

	    Default setting. 1 (boolean true)

	    Headings in man page content should be or should not be uppercased.

     manvolnum-cite-numeral-only
	    Brief. Man page section citation should use only the number

	    Default setting. 1 (boolean true)

	    When citing other man pages, the man-page section is either given as
	    is,  or  has the letters stripped from it, citing only the number of
	    the section (e.g. section 3x becomes 3). This option specifies which
	    style.

     quotes-on-literals
	    Brief. Display quotes on literal elements?

	    Default setting. 0 (boolean false)

	    If true, render literal elements with quotes around them.

     show-comments
	    Brief. Display comment elements?

	    Default setting. 1 (boolean true)

	    If true, comments will be displayed, otherwise they are  suppressed.
	    Comments  here  refers to the comment element, which will be renamed
	    remark in DocBook V4.0, not XML comments (<-- like this  -->)  which
	    are unavailable.

     function-parens
	    Brief. Generate parentheses after a function?

	    Default setting. 0 (boolean false)

	    If	true, the formatting of a <function> element will include gener-
	    ated parenthesis.

     xref-on-link
	    Brief. Should link generate a cross-reference?

	    Default setting. 1 (boolean true)

	    Man pages cannot render the hypertext links created by link. If this
	    option is set, then the stylesheet renders a cross reference to  the
	    target  of the link.  (This may reduce clutter). Otherwise, only the
	    content of the link is rendered and the actual link  itself  is  ig-
	    nored.

     header-3
	    Brief. Third header text

	    Default setting. (blank)

	    Specifies  the text of the third header of a man page, typically the
	    date for the man page. If empty, the date content for  the	refentry
	    is used.

     header-4
	    Brief. Fourth header text

	    Default setting. (blank)

	    Specifies  the  text  of the fourth header of a man page.  If empty,
	    the refmiscinfo content for the refentry is used.

     header-5
	    Brief. Fifth header text

	    Default setting. (blank)

	    Specifies the text of the fifth header of a man page.  If empty, the
	    `manual name', that is, the title of the book or reference container
	    is used.

     default-manpage-section
	    Brief. Default man page section

	    Default setting. 1

	    The source document usually indicates the  sections  that  each  man
	    page  should  belong  to  (with  manvolnum	in refmeta). In case the
	    source document does not indicate  man-page  sections,  this  option
	    specifies the default.

     custom-localization-file
	    Brief. URI of XML document containing custom localization data

	    Default setting. (blank)

	    This  parameter  specifies	the URI of a XML document that describes
	    text translations (and other locale-specific  information)	that  is
	    needed by the stylesheet to process the DocBook document.

	    The  text  translations pointed to by this parameter always override
	    the default text translations (from the internal parameter localiza-
	    tion-file).  If a particular translation is not  present  here,  the
	    corresponding default translation is used as a fallback.

	    This parameter is primarily for changing certain punctuation charac-
	    ters used in formatting the source document.  The settings for punc-
	    tuation  characters  are  often specific to the source document, but
	    can also be dependent on the locale.

	    To not use custom text translations, leave	this  parameter  as  the
	    empty string.

     custom-l10n-data
	    Brief. XML document containing custom localization data

	    Default setting. document($custom-localization-file)

	    This parameter specifies the XML document that describes text trans-
	    lations  (and  other  locale-specific information) that is needed by
	    the stylesheet to process the DocBook document.

	    This parameter is internal to the stylesheet.  To point to an exter-
	    nal XML document with a URI or a file name, you should use the  cus-
	    tom-localization-file parameter instead.

	    However,  inside  a custom stylesheet (not on the command-line) this
	    paramter can be set to the XPath expression document(''), which will
	    cause the custom translations directly embedded  inside  the  custom
	    stylesheet to be read.

     author-othername-in-middle
	    Brief. Is othername in author a middle name?

	    Default setting. 1

	    If	true,  the  othername of an author appears between the firstname
	    and surname. Otherwise, othername is suppressed.

EXAMPLES
     $ docbook2man --solinks manpages.xml
     $ docbook2man --solinks --encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT manpages.xml
     $ docbook2man --string-param header-4="Free Recode 3.6" document.xml
     .fi

CONVERSION PROCESS
   Converting to man pages
     DocBook documents are converted to man pages in two steps:

     1.  The DocBook source is converted by a XSLT stylesheet into an intermedi-
	 ate XML format, Man-XML.

	 Man-XML is simpler than DocBook and closer to the man page  format;  it
	 is intended to make the stylesheets' job easier.

	 The stylesheet for this purpose is in xslt/man/docbook.xsl.  For porta-
	 bility, it should always be referred to by the following URI:

	 http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/latest/xslt/man/docbook.xsl

	 Run this stylesheet with db2x_xsltproc(1).

	 Customizing.	You  can  also customize the output by creating your own
	 XSLT stylesheet -- changing parameters or adding new templates  --  and
	 importing xslt/man/docbook.xsl.

     2.  Man-XML is converted to the actual man pages by db2x_manxml(1).

     The  docbook2man command does both steps automatically, but if any problems
     occur, you can see the errors more clearly if you do each step separately:

     $ db2x_xsltproc -s man mydoc.xml -o mydoc.mxml
     $ db2x_manxml mydoc.mxml
     .fi

     Options to the conversion stylesheet are described in
     the man-pages stylesheets
     reference.

     Pure XSLT conversion.
     An alternative to the db2x_manxml Perl script is the XSLT
     stylesheet in
     xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl.
     This stylesheet performs a similar function
     of converting Man-XML to actual man pages.
     It is useful if you desire a pure XSLT
     solution to man-page conversion.
     Of course, the quality of the conversion using this stylesheet
     will never be as good as the Perl db2x_manxml,
     and it runs slower.
     In particular, the pure XSLT version
     currently does not support tables in man pages,
     but its Perl counterpart does.

   Character set conversion
     When translating XML to legacy ASCII-based formats with  poor  support  for
     Unicode,  such  as  man pages and Texinfo, there is always the problem that
     Unicode characters in the source document also have to be translated  some-
     how.

     A	straightforward  character set conversion from Unicode does not suffice,
     because the target character set, usually US-ASCII or ISO Latin-1,  do  not
     contain  common  characters  such as dashes and directional quotation marks
     that are widely used in XML documents. But  document  formatters  (man  and
     Texinfo)  allow such characters to be entered by a markup escape: for exam-
     ple, \(lq for the left directional quote ".  And if a  markup-level  escape
     is  not available, an ASCII transliteration might be used: for example, us-
     ing the ASCII less-than sign < for the angle quotation mark <.

     So the Unicode character problem can be solved in two steps:

     1.  utf8trans(1), a program included in docbook2X, maps Unicode  characters
	 to markup-level escapes or transliterations.

	 Since	there  is  not	necessarily a fixed, official mapping of Unicode
	 characters, utf8trans can read in  user-modifiable  character	mappings
	 expressed in text files and apply them. (Unlike most character set con-
	 verters.)

	 In  charmaps/man/roff.charmap and charmaps/man/texi.charmap are charac-
	 ter maps that may be used for man-page  and  Texinfo  conversion.   The
	 programs  db2x_manxml(1) and db2x_texixml(1) will apply these character
	 maps, or another character map specified by the user, automatically.

     2.  The rest of the Unicode text is converted to some other  character  set
	 (encoding).   For  example,  a French document with accented characters
	 (such as e) might be converted to ISO Latin 1.

	 This step is applied  after  utf8trans  character  mapping,  using  the
	 iconv(1)  encoding  conversion tool.  Both db2x_manxml(1) and db2x_tex-
	 ixml(1) can call iconv(1) automatically when producing their output.

FILES
     /usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/man/docbook.xsl
     /usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/backend/db2x_manxml.xsl
     /usr/local/share/docbook2X/xslt/catalog.xml
     /usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap
     /usr/local/share/docbook2X/charmaps/roff.charmap.xml

     The above files are distributed and installed by the docbook2X package.

NOTES
     The docbook2man or the docbook2texi command described in this  manual  page
     come  from  the docbook2X package.  It should not be confused with the com-
     mand of the same name from the obsoleted docbook-utils package.

LIMITATIONS
     *
       Internally there is one long pipeline of  programs  which  your	document
       goes  through. If any segment of the pipeline fails (even trivially, like
       from mistyped program options), the resulting errors can be difficult  to
       decipher  --  in this case, try running the components of docbook2X sepa-
       rately.

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

SEE ALSO
     db2x_xsltproc(1), db2x_manxml(1), utf8trans(1)

     The docbook2X manual (in Texinfo or HTML format)  fully  describes  how  to
     convert DocBook to man pages and Texinfo.

     Up-to-date information about this program can be found at the docbook2X Web
     site <http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/> .

docbook2X 0.8.8 		  3 March 2007			  docbook2man(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=docbook2man&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

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