Who Runs Pretty Thin Web Site?

Software for creating a book and web pages that runs on Linux

• What software would you recommend for creating material for a book and a web site that runs well on Linux? I would prefer to have one version of the text that will appear in the book and the web site. The book and the website will have quite a few graphics. There are times when I will want the text in the book to be slightly different from the text on the web site. I wrote the web site, www.googleguide.com, in html with emacs as my text editor. I'm quite comfortable using LaTex, having written several books with it.

• Answer:

  Hello, nancyb: I'm going to explain you, as easy as possible, what is DocBook and for what you can use it, in any case, don't hesitate to request for any clarification, I'm here to help you until you get the desired results. The concept is really simple, you write the documentation in a standard format (DocBook) that doesn't specify anything about font types, font sizes, italic, margins or any other "visual" attribute, you just tell how the document is organized, for example, you create chapters, titles, lists, illustrations, notes, etc. What does it mean? It means that you are specifying how the information is "organized" instead how the information "must look". When you finish your document, then, it's time to show it to the world, that is, "transform it" to something readable by humans, so you need to apply a "transformation" to your document and this is the process that adds the "visual" attributes and produces a result in a viewable format, for example, PDF, HTML, PS, etc. You can follow the DocBook development through this two websites: OASIS DocBook TC http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=docbook DocBook http://www.docbook.org/ The last one is the website for the official guide of DocBook, I suggest you to read it here: DocBook: The Definitive Guide http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/docbook/chapter/book/docbook.html A very interesting starting point to know more about DockBook is the "wiki", a system that gathers a lot of information from DocBook users: The DocBook Wiki http://www.docbook.org/wiki/moin.cgi/ Why DocBook? http://www.docbook.org/wiki/moin.cgi/WhyDocBook Although there are tools to convert from other formats to DocBook, I suggest you to start writting from scratch, or copying and pasting existing documents into the editor, because converters generate a lot of trash that makes uneditable the results, in any case, here is a list of possible conversion tools: Convert Other Formats to DocBook http://docbook.org/wiki/moin.cgi/ConvertOtherFormatsToDocBook To write DocBook documents, any XML editor is valid, but you need to know some of XML, I have been looking for an XML editor to write DocBook documents without XML knowledge for a long time in the past and the best, in my opinion, is XMLMind XML Editor: XMLmind XML Editor http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/ You can download the standard edition to try before buy: Download Standard Edition http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/download.shtml Here is the direct link to the more appropiate version if you are a Windows user: Windows auto-installable binary distribution, bundled with a private JavaTM 1.4.2 runtime. http://www.xmlmind.net/xmleditor/_download/xxe-std-25-setup.exe Once you setup the editor, two easy steps to start writting your book: -File | New... | Select the DocBook Book Template -DocBook | Convert Document | Convert to HTML... Of course, you will need to read more about the editor to master it before writting a book, but it's very easy and it has a very good online help. I know that DocBook seems weird and complex the first time, but once you write your first document and know that you can publish it anywhere in almost any format, you will see the real benefits of DocBook. Please, don't hesitate to request for any clarification. Regards.