[vox-tech] docbook to text

[Peter Jay Salzman]

i'm trying to convert docbook sgml to text, and am having a terrible
time of it:



i tried using sgml2txt, but it complained that it didn't know how to
handle docbook.  it suggested that i use jade.

ok.

reading through jade's help files, it appears that jade doesn't know how
to convert sgml to text.  this is starting to feel like UC davis's
bureacracy.

ok.

i can convert docbook to html (obviously), so i try html2text.  the
results have wierd underscoring things in it.  reading through the docs,
there's a -nobs option which produces pure text.

ok.

i try html2text with -nobs.  the results stink.  the formating is all
wrong.  there *should* be a blank line between an <H[1-4]> line and the
following text.  verbatim text is all screwed up.

ok.

after some searching, i find 'man html2textrc'.   yuck.  i _really_
don't want to read through this.  the rc file is complicated.  i don't
want to spend this amount of time for something as simple as converting
html to text.  i shouldn't have to spend more than 5 minutes on such a
simple operation.

ok.

i can convert man pages to text, so i use docbook-to-man and convert the
sgml file to a man page.  the results are worse than awful.  it's
completely unreadable.



are you feeling my pain yet?  this should be simple, and it's turning
out to be a nightmare.

does anyone have any ideas on how to convert a docbook file to text?

alternatively, if anyone has an .html2textrc file suitable for FAQ style
documents, i'd love to have a copy of your dotfile.

pete


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