DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: extreme newbie - dsssl customization ...

[Norman Walsh <ndw at nwalsh dot com>]

[ Follow-ups to docbook-apps, please ]

/ Douglas du Boulay <ddb@R3401.rlem.titech.ac.jp> was heard to say:
| Sorry, me  again. I'm getting closer to a final rendering now - 
| thanks Norm, thanks Bob. 
|
| Now I need to customize the dsssl behaviour for <cmdsynopsis> and <arg> because,
| well basically, I abused them. 
|
| I found "The Modular DocBook Stylesheets" manual by Norm
| But the relevent chapter(3) concerning the actual customization doesn't 
| seem go into "how to override the behaviour of existing stylesheet elements".
|
| I also found a dsssl customization FAQ somewhere but it seemed to deal only
| with flipping the dsssl option switches from #t to #f for different 
| rendering results rather than actually hacking the dsssl.
|
| Not sure where the guide to dsssl itself is, which is probably what I should 
| be reading.
|
| anyway, basically what I want is for 
| <cmdsynopsis> not to to get treated as a paragraph with breaks above and 
| below, and, for any contained <arg>s not to get wrapped in [arg] square
| brackets but to be rendered in a bold font, and if their so happens to be 
| an <arg role="default"> then render it as bold and red font.
| Nothing too fancy.

So you want something like this in your customization layer:

(element cmdsynopsis
  (process-children))

(element (cmdsynopsis arg)
  (make element gi: "B"
    (if (equal? (attribute-string (normalize "role")) "default")
      (make element gi: "FONT"
            attributes: '(("COLOR" "RED"))
            (process-children))
      (process-children))))

| Also I used a number of standard isogreek etc. entities which get mapped to 
| some obscure #xxx; HTML entities and I wonder where that mapping table 
| exists and is accessed by the dsssl? (So I can methodically search and
| replace with dinky greek symbol icons)

Those entities have been expanded by the time DSSSL sees the file. You can
search for individual characters but it makes Jade *really slow*.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | You look wise. Pray correct that
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | error.--Charles Lamb
Chair, DocBook Technical Committee |