RPM-for-Unix HOW-TO: Other Formats of this Document

11. Other Formats of this Document

This document is published in 14 different formats namely: DVI, Postscript, Latex, Adobe Acrobat PDF, LyX, GNU-info, HTML, RTF(Rich Text Format), Plain-text, Unix man pages, single HTML file, SGML (Linuxdoc format), SGML (Docbook format), and MS WinHelp format.

This howto document is located at:

http://www.linuxdoc.org and click on HOWTOs and search for the howto document name using CTRL+f or ALT+f within the web-browser.

You can also find this document at the following mirrors sites:

http://www.caldera.com/LDP/HOWTO
http://www.linux.ucla.edu/LDP
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/linux/LDP
http://www.redhat.com/mirrors/LDP
Other mirror sites near you (network-address-wise) can be found at http://www.linuxdoc.org/mirrors.html select a site and go to directory /LDP/HOWTO/xxxxx-HOWTO.html

You can get this HOWTO document as a single file tar ball in HTML, DVI, Postscript or SGML formats from - ftp://www.linuxdoc.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/ and http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto
Plain text format is in: ftp://www.linuxdoc.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO and http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto
Single HTML file format is in: http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto
A single HTML file can be created with the command (see man sgml2html) - sgml2html -split 0 xxxxhowto.sgml
Translations to other languages like French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese are in ftp://www.linuxdoc.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO and http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto Any help from you to translate to other languages is welcome.

The document is written using a tool called "SGML-Tools" which can be got from: http://www.sgmltools.org Compiling the source you will get the following commands like:

sgml2html xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate html file)
sgml2html -split 0 xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate a single page html file)
sgml2rtf xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate RTF file)
sgml2latex xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate latex file)

11.1 Acrobat PDF format

A PDF file can be generated from postscript file using either acrobat distill or Ghostscript. And a postscript file is generated from DVI which in turn is generated from a LaTex file. You can download distill software from http://www.adobe.com and from unix and from windows . Given below is a sample session:

bash$ man sgml2latex
bash$ sgml2latex filename.sgml
bash$ man dvips
bash$ dvips -o filename.ps filename.dvi
bash$ distill filename.ps
bash$ man ghostscript
bash$ man ps2pdf
bash$ ps2pdf input.ps output.pdf
bash$ acroread output.pdf &

Or you can use the Ghostscript command ps2pdf. ps2pdf is a work-alike for nearly all the functionality of Adobe's Acrobat Distiller product: it converts PostScript files to Portable Document Format (PDF) files. ps2pdf is implemented as a very small command script (batch file) that invokes Ghostscript, selecting a special "output device" called pdfwrite. In order to use ps2pdf, the pdfwrite device must be included in the makefile when Ghostscript was compiled; see the documentation on building Ghostscript for details.

11.2 Convert Linuxdoc to Docbook format

This document is written in linuxdoc SGML format. The Docbook SGML format supercedes the linuxdoc format and has a lot more features than linuxdoc. The linuxdoc is very simple and easy to use. To convert linuxdoc SGML file to Docbook SGML use the program ld2db.sh and some Perl scripts. The ld2db output is not 100% clean and you need to use the clean_ld2db.pl Perl script. You may need to manually correct a few lines in the document.

Download the ld2db program from http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~rrt/docbook.html or from Al Dev site
Download the cleanup_ld2db.pl perl script from from Al Dev site

The ld2db.sh is not 100% clean, so you will get some errors when you run it.

        bash$ ld2db.sh file-linuxdoc.sgml db.sgml
        bash$ cleanup.pl db.sgml > db_clean.sgml
        bash$ gvim db_clean.sgml 
        bash$ docbook2html db.sgml

And you may have to manually edit some of the minor errors after running the Perl script. For example you may need to put closing tag < /Para> for each < Listitem>

11.3 Convert to MS WinHelp format

You can convert the SGML howto document to a Microsoft Windows Help file, First convert the sgml to html using:

        bash$ sgml2html xxxxhowto.sgml     (to generate html file)
        bash$ sgml2html -split 0   xxxxhowto.sgml (to generate a single page html file)

Then use the tool HtmlToHlp. You can also use sgml2rtf and then use the RTF files for generating winhelp files.

11.4 Reading various formats

In order to view the document in dvi format, use the xdvi program. The xdvi program is located in tetex-xdvi*.rpm package in Redhat Linux which can be located through ControlPanel | Applications | Publishing | TeX menu buttons. To read a dvi document give the command:


        xdvi -geometry 80x90 howto.dvi
        man xdvi

And resize the window with the mouse. To navigate use Arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down keys, also you can use 'f', 'd', 'u', 'c', 'l', 'r', 'p', 'n' letter keys to move up, down, center, next page, previous page etc. To turn off expert menu press 'x'.

You can read a postscript file using the program 'gv' (ghostview) or 'ghostscript'. The ghostscript program is in the ghostscript*.rpm package and the gv program is in the gv*.rpm package in Redhat Linux which can be located through ControlPanel | Applications | Graphics menu buttons. The gv program is much more user friendly than ghostscript. Also ghostscript and gv are available on other platforms like OS/2, Windows 95 and NT. You can view this document even on those platforms.

Get ghostscript for Windows 95, OS/2, and for all OSes from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost

To read a postscript document give the command:


                gv howto.ps
                ghostscript howto.ps

You can read an HTML format document using Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet explorer, Redhat Baron Web browser or any of the 10 other web browsers.

You can read the latex, LyX output using LyX an X Window front end to LaTex.

11.5 Convert HTML to SGML html2sgml

To convert any HTML document to Linuxdoc SGML use the tool 'html2sgml' from http://www.abc.se/~m9339/prog/html2sgml.html.

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