Re: Can extension build own SGML document?

On 9/15/15 10:13 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Jim Nasby <Jim(dot)Nasby(at)bluetreble(dot)com> writes:
>> On 9/15/15 8:43 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> AFAICT from a quick look at its documentation, asciidoc can produce
>>> either html or docbook output; so as soon as you want something other
>>> than html output (in particular, PDF), you're back to relying on the
>>> exact same creaky docbook toolchain we use now. Only with one extra
>>> dependency in front of it.
>
>> a2x (http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/a2x.1.html) states that it can
>> generate "PDF, EPUB, DVI, PS, LaTeX, XHTML (single page or chunked), man
>> page, HTML Help or plain text formats using asciidoc(1) and other
>> applications (see REQUISITES section). SOURCE_FILE can also be a DocBook
>> file with an .xml extension."
>
> AFAICS, for all cases other than HTML output, the "other applications"
> are basically the docbook toolchain.

I just started looking at , which seems to be the newer way to handle
asciidoc. Aside from being a lot faster than a2x/asciidoc, it can
produce docbook natively. However...

>> What I expect would be a lot more effort is actually converting all the
>> SGML to asciidoc. A quick google search doesn't turn up anything promising.
>
> Yeah, the cost of conversion means we're not likely to want to experiment
> to see what's better :-(.

If the only concern is handling docbook format (which is what our SGML
docs produce? Then https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-fopub
might be an option. It's intended for use with asciidoctor, but the
README does state:

"Using the asciidoctor-fopub project, you can convert any DocBook file
into a nicely formatted PDF with nothing more than a Java runtime (JVM)
and development kit (JDK). All the open source software required to
perform the conversion is automatically fetched from the internet the
first time you run it."

So maybe it would allow removing some of more problematic parts of the
toolchain?

Also, if our SGML does produce docbook as an intermediate it might be
possible to convert that to asciidoc via
https://github.com/oreillymedia/docbook2asciidoc.
--
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com