12. Other Formats of this Document
This section is written by
Al Dev
(at site
"http://www.milkywaygalaxy.freeservers.com"
mirrors at
angelfire
,
geocities
,
virtualave
,
Fortunecity
,
Freewebsites
,
Tripod
,
101xs
,
50megs
)
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), MS WinHelp format.
This howto document is located at -
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"
Single HTML file can be created with command (see man sgml2html) -
sgml2html -split 0 xxxxhowto.sgml
Translations to other languages like French, German, Spanish,
Chinese, 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)
12.1. Acrobat PDF format
PDF file can be generated from postscript file using either acrobat
distill
or
Ghostscript
. And postscript file is generated from DVI which in turn is generated
from LaTex file. You can download distill software from
"http://www.adobe.com"
. 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 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.
12.2. Convert Linuxdoc to Docbook format
This document is written in linuxdoc SGML format. The Docbook SGML
format supercedes the linuxdoc format and has lot more features than
linuxdoc. The linuxdoc is very simple and is 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[percnt] clean and
you need to use the
clean_ld2db.pl
perl script. You may need to manually correct few lines in the
document.
The ld2db.sh is not 100[percnt] clean, you will get lot of errors when
you run
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 e.g. you may need to put closing tag <
/Para> for each < Listitem>
12.3. Convert to MS WinHelp format
You can convert the SGML howto document to 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.
12.4. 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 [verbar] Applications
[verbar] Publishing [verbar] TeX menu buttons. To read dvi document
give the command -
xdvi -geometry 80x90 howto.dvi man xdvi
|
And resize the window with 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 postscript file using the program 'gv' (ghostview) or
'ghostscript'. The ghostscript program is in ghostscript*.rpm package
and gv program is in gv*.rpm package in Redhat Linux which can be
located through ControlPanel [verbar] Applications [verbar] 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 view this document even on those
platforms.
To read postscript document give the command -
gv howto.ps ghostscript howto.ps
|
You can read 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 a X-Windows front end to
latex.
