7.4. Using the LDP XSL stylesheets
When working with DocBook XML, the LDP uses a series of
XSL
stylesheets to process documents into HTML. These stylesheets create
output files using the XML toolset that are similar to those produced by
the SGML tools using ldp.dsl.
 | At the current time, the LDP XSL stylesheets are still in
development and may not have all the functionality found in
ldp.dsl. Specifically, the XSL-FO stylesheet for
creating print documents has not yet been created. If you need PDF
or other print output, you will need to use the SGML toolset and
ldp.dsl. |
The major difference between using ldp.dsl
and the XSL stylesheets is the way that the generation of multiple
files is handled, i.e. the creation of a separate file for each chapter,
section and appendix. With the SGML tools, such as
jade or openjade, the tool
itself was responsible for generating the separate files. Because of
this, only a single file, ldp.dsl was necessary as
a customization layer for the standard DocBook DSSSL stylesheets.
With the DocBook XSL stylesheets, generation of multiple files is
controlled by the stylesheet. If you want to
generate a single file, you call one stylesheet. If you want to generate
multiple files, you call a different stylesheet. For that reason the
LDP XSL stylesheet distribution is comprised of four files:
ldp-html.xsl - stylesheet called to generate
a single file.
ldp-html-chunk.xsl - stylesheet called to generate
multiple files based on chapter, section and appendix elements.
ldp-html-common.xsl - stylesheet containing
the actual XSLT transformations. It is called by the other two HTML
stylesheets and is never directly called.
ldp-print.xsl - stylesheet for generation of
XSL Formatting Objects for print output. (Currently this
file is a placeholder and has not been customized.)
You can find the latest copy of the files at http://www.tldp.org/authors/tools/ldp-xsl.zip.
Once you have the file, you may need to do some editing of
the first few lines based on the location of your DocBook XSL
files.
Unzip the files into a directory where you will call them.
You will then need to modify the files for your local installtion
of the DocBook XSL stylesheets from Norman Walsh.
First open up ldp-html.xsl and look for the
following line:
Modify that path if necessary to point to where you have the
docbook.xsl stylesheet installed.
Next open up ldp-html-chunk.xsl and look for
the line:
Modify that path if necessary to point to where you have the
chunk.xsl stylesheet installed.
With that complete, you can now generate HTML files. To generate
a single HTML file from your DocBook XML file, use the command:
bash$ xsltproc -o outputfilename.xml /usr/lib/sgml/stylesheets/ldp-html.xsl inputfilename.xml
|
| This example uses Daniel Veillard's xsltproc
command available as part of libxslt from
http://www.xmlsoft.org/XSLT/.
If you are using other XML processors such as Xalan or Saxon, you will
need to change the command line appropriately.
|
To generate a set of linked HTML pages, with a separate page for each
<chapter>, <sect1> or <appendix> tag, use the following
command:
bash$ xsltproc /usr/lib/sgml/stylesheets/ldp-html-chunk.xsl filename.xml
|
Note that you never directly call the stylesheet
ldp-html-common.xsl. It is called by both of the
other two stylesheets.
At the current time, the print stylesheet, ldp-print.xsl
has not been developed and provides no additional functions or
customizations to the standard DocBook XSL stylesheets.
