| Hi Steve,
I'm posting a response here as well as mailing it to you in case other
folks have a similar question.
To answer your question--you bet. In fact, one of the reasons we kept
the ObjectBroker reference manual in VAX DOCUMENT rather than putting it
in Word like the rest of the docset was to make this generation easier.
We currently generate a printed book, a word help file, unix manpages
(HP-UX, Digital UNIX, AIX, SunOS, Solaris, etc.), and VMS DCL help from
the same SDML source. We use the MANPAGE doctype for the manpages and
the HELP doctype to generate the DCL help. The HELP doctype was part
of VAX DOCUMENT 2.0 and the MANPAGE doctype was part of the internal
writer's toolkit release of VAX DOCUMENT.
-Randy
|
| >> <<< Note 18.1 by XLSIOR::OTTE >>>
>> -< Yup, use VAX DOC to get there... >-
Randy,
Thanks for the information. This is my foray into the UNIX world, and
I'm glad to see that despite the grumbling about VAX Document, it provides
the solution after all.
-s
|
| Steve,
I don't have much to add to Randy's comments. You know by now that it's
possible; I'm not sure that it's a Perfect Solution, but there are
situations where it's the only one available. Having done it, I'd avoid
it if I could. To get a decent result you have to get your hands dirty
with the nroff code anyway, so you may as well learn nroff properly and
start from ground zero - this is the advice I got from the OSF tools
people when I was in the throes.
If you need to do it, read the WTK release notes (or maybe Touch
Technologies - the third party that now handles VAX Document - has now
rolled the MANPAGE doctype into the public V3). The release notes have
a lot to say about possible problems and unsupported tags. Maybe the
key to .1's success is writing the .sdml files from the start with
those shortcomings in mind, rather than just taking an old and complex
.sdml file and hoping the WTK could hack it. One feature of the MANPAGE
doctype is that it doesn't like <reference>s (which makes sense in a
manpage, up to a point). But the document I was working on made copious
use of a symbols file; so I worked around the <reference> limitation
with <condition>(manpage). This produced some gappy output in the
manpage (and made the use of a text symbol at all a bit pointless).
Some manpages I have recently `inherited' have some format problems,
probably for similar reasons. As I say, some editing of the .3 files
may well be necessary.
All in all I suspect that the MANPAGE doctype was created in response
to an immediate problem (like `we need n,000 manpages by tomorrow'),
rather than as a good way of producing on-line information for UNIX
users.
But I hope it worked for you. Contact me for further details if it's
not too late.
Bob
But there may be thousands of happy users out there.
|