LinuxDoc-Tools User's Guide: Introduction

## 1. Introduction

This document is the user's guide to the LinuxDoc-Tools document processing system. LinuxDoc-Tools is a suite of programs to help you write source documents that can be rendered as plain text, hypertext, or LaTeX files. It contains what you need to know to set up LinuxDoc-Tools and write documents using it. See `example.sgml` for an example of an LinuxDoc DTD SGML document that you can use as a model for your own documents. The ``LinuxDoc'' means the name of a specific SGML DTD here.

## 1.1 What's the DTD ?

The DTD specifies the names of ``elements'' within the document. An element is just a bit of structure; like a section, a subsection, a paragraph, or even something smaller like emphasized text. You may know the HTML has their own DTD.

Don't be confusing. SGML is not a text-formatting system. SGML itself is used only to specify the document structure. There are no text-formatting facilities or ``macros'' intrinsic to SGML itself. All of those things are defined within the DTD. You can't use SGML without a DTD; a DTD defines what SGML does. For more Detail, please refer the later section of this document ( How LinuxDoc-Tools Works).

## 1.2 History of the LinuxDoc

The LinuxDoc DTD is created by Matt Welsh as the core part of his Linuxdoc-SGML document processing system. This DTD is based heavily on the QWERTZ DTD by Tom Gordon, `thomas.gordon@gmd.de`. The target of the QWERTZ DTD is to provide the simple way to create LaTeX source for document publishing. Matt Welsh took and shaped it into Linuxdoc-SGML because he needed it to produce a lot of Linux Documentations. It can convert a single source of documentation into various output formats such as plain text, html, and PS. No work for synchronization between various output formatted documents are needed.

The Linuxdoc-SGML system had been maintained for years by Matt Welsh and many others, but it has some limitations. Then Cees de Groot came and created the new system using perl. The new system is called as ``SGML-Tools''. The perl based version for LinuxDoc had been maintained for a year, then totally new system using the original python scripts and some stylesheets with the jade has been released. This system is called as ``SGML-Tools 2.0'' and it does not use the LinuxDoc DTD as the main DTD, but uses the new standard one, the DocBook DTD. Now ``SGML-Tools 2.0'' becomes ``SGMLtools-Lite'' and is distributed from http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/.

Recently, the DocBook DTD is the standard DTD for the technical software documentation, and used by many project such as GNOME and KDE, as well as many professional authors and commercial publishers. But some people in the LDP, and users of the various LinuxDoc SGML documents, still needs the support of the tools for the LinuxDoc. This ``LinuxDoc-Tools'' is created for those people. If you need the tools for the LinuxDoc DTD, then you may wish to use this. But remember, the LinuxDoc DTD is not the standard way now even in the Linux world. If you can, try the DocBook DTD. It is the standard, and full-featured way of writing the documentations.