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 directory.  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 undefined 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 sup-
       ported markup.

TO DO

       Obvious stuff:

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

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

       o 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.

       o 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.

       o 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 docbook2man] 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.

								 12 September 2012					    DOCBOOK2MAN-SPEC.PL(1)