Re: DocBookInConTeXt customization?

[Gour <gour@mail.inet.hr>]

Simon Pepping (spepping@scaprea.hobby.nl) wrote:

> It is like you say at the top, but the context document is built on
> the fly, i.e., it only exists in memory, and it never exists in its
> entirety. It may be better to think of the XML file as the input file
> for context. This is possible because the < is an active character
> that invokes macro processing. Context's XML layer enables the
> conversion author to write a mapping from XML tag to context commands:
> when that tag is read, the corresponding context commands are invoked.

It would be nice to just have an ability to output context's "on-the-fly" 
document.

> I will try to document the customization options for the docbook
> module somewhere after Christmas.

That would be very hlepful.

> > which is similar to XSL toolchain:
> > 
> >          xslt            fop
> > DocBook ------> XSL-FO  -----> output
> > 
> > with the exception that ConTeXt format is more user-friendly & capable than 
> > xsl-fo format, and produces best quality output.
> 
> I am not sure that this is a good parallel. FO's are not customizable;
> the XSLT stylesheets may be. And context could serve as the FO
> processor, by the same mechanism of a mapping of FO's to context, if
> someone would write it. That is what PassiveTeX does for latex. 

I agree it's not the best parallel, but there is lot of space to customize 
XSLT stylesheets which produce FO file.

The point is that the first diagram should look like:

         dic            ConTeXt
DocBook -------> *.tex  --------> output


The point is clear: allow users which use DocBook, as an authoring tool, to havebenfit of Con(TeX)t typeset engine.

I hoped that LyX would go this route to extend its usage for XML (DocBook), but
at the moment developers are too occupied by GUI stuff.

TeX & ConTeXt are great but they have some learning curve for average users, but
by enabling DocBook authors to produce high-quality PDFs with some reasonable 
defaults, plus the ability to customize the output for power users (like XSLT
DocBook customization layer), I'm sure it will drastically increase number of 
ConTeXt users and provide to new perspective to TeX publishing in general.

The similar thing will happen with latest Hans' development and providing utf-8
support.

Sincerely,
Gour
  
-- 
Gour
gour@mail.inet.hr
Registered Linux User #278493