On Tuesday 02 April 2013 16:42:09 Scott Kostyshak wrote: > Currently the converter chain for DocBook -> PDF (ps2pdf) is the following: > > docbook -> DVI > DVI -> Postscript > Postscript -> PDF (ps2pdf) > > The converter for docbook -> DVI is: sgmltools -b dvi $$i > > sgmltools has a backend for postscript also. Is there any disadvantage > to having the following as the converter? > sgmltools -b ps $$i > > That would obviate the (at least, external) dvi to ps conversion. > > If the ps backend should be supported, I assume that it should be > added in addition to, and not instead of, the dvi converter? > > Scott
The are two path to export from docbook to pdf, one is via latex and other through fo (apache fop available as free/open source). Clearly the more mature is the latex way. The sgmltools (that I don't have installed) will most probably use the latex way so I agree with you that the ps backend is the way to go (even if in the end it is the same transformation path). FWIW I am using the db2xxx tools (db2dvi db2html db2pdf db2ps db2rtf) from the docbook-utils project http://sources.redhat.com/docbook-tools/ when looking to my running instance of lyx (2.1-git) I see that I don't have neither db2pdf nor db2ps active so I expect this to be a missing implementation of the converters (on our part) rather than any problems in the those converters. I agree that my explanation is a bit cryptic at points so I can expand further if you want to. Regards, -- José Abílio
