[vox-tech] quality of Docbook -> HTML conversion?

[Micah Cowan]

On Thu, 2002-02-28 at 16:39, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> begin Mark K. Kim <markslist@cbreak.org> 
> > Keywords: LaTeX, Docbook, HTML, converters, conversion

Is it enough to leave the above line in, or do I have to reiterate it? 
(Or, is it enough that I'm responding to it?)

> > I was
> > wondering how the Docbook -> HTML conversion compares with the LaTeX ->
> > HTML conversion?
> 
> it's ... ok.  no great shakes.  i think i'm spoiled permanently by
> latex, but i've never really been totally happy with docbook->anything.
> don't expect to be much happier (if at all).

It can be as good or bad as you need it to be (theoretically) - all
depends on the stylesheets you use.  But if you go with Norman Walsh's
stylesheets, I pretty much agree - there's a lot left to be desired. 
(And if you don't, you'll probably need to learn to write your own, so
in reality, you'll be no better off than editing the code for
LaTeX->HTML tools).

I'm gonna be starting my own soon.  I use Docbook XML, so I'll be
writing the stylesheets in XSLT.  Apache's Xalan works really well for
XML transformations.  But they won't be intended for public use - I'm
actually planning on using it as part of a system to allow public
comments on my documents - naturally, if I actually get around to
implementing this, I'll let everyone know.

> > I don't care about math equations and the fancy stuff;
> 
> you can't even do that stuff in docbook...

Yes, you can.  DocBook has a MathML extension - at least the XML version
does.

>From what I've seen, though, while MathML is probably as powerful as TeX
in terms of what it can produce (no, I have *not* verified this), it
doesn't look to be nearly as straightforward to use.

However, MathML has the advantage of being XML, so when browsers support
MathML embedded in XHTML pages (Mozilla already does, I believe), you'll
be able to stick your equations directly in your web docs.

Micah