Ian S. Worthington wrote:
If I understand correctly I have to choose a target language for Lyx from the
start: I can't start off with Latex and then later decide to I want to target
DocBook, for example.
No, you can switch the documents. There may be some issues about how
different bits of formatting get converted that will make things easier
or more difficult. But these can often be resolved using an external
script of some sort (sed, awk, perl, etc).
This mailing lists contains occasional requests for help, but not too much
information. If it wasn't for the information at
http://www.neomantic.com/tutorials/lyx-and-docbookXML I would have concluded
that DocBook support in Lyx had been effectively abandoned.
No, it still exists. Not many people use it, though, so how current it
is, etc, is unclear. That said, however, there are some developers who
pay attention to DocBook, and I think it's intended that it be usable.
I wonder then if someone could help me with the following:
1. Am I right in my thinking that if I want good quality HTML and potentially
CHM output, as well as PDF, then DocBook is the way to go rather than Latex?
Possibly, though there are a lot of options for HTML now. You might
check out plastex, which looks to me to be the most promising.
2. And that if I want DocBook, then I need to be using that from the start?
Not necessarily. See above.
3. Is DocBook development in Lyx abandonded or is it just quiet for the moment?
See above again. Though perhaps it's worth my saying what "DocBook
development" is. There are just two aspects to it: (i) The DocBook
layouts; (ii) the DocBook output routines. Both of these could be worked
on by newbies, to some extent, certainly the layouts and very probably
the output routines.
4. Is there any documentation on what a user of the latest version of Lyx has
to do to resolve the "unavailable class" messages when using DocBook, and what
they need to install in 2009 to get output from it.
I'm not sure. But looking at configure.py, it seems that you need
sgmltools installed, or else db2dvi or db2html.
I'm cc'ing Martin Vermeer, as I think he knows about this....
Richard
Thanks,
i
