SGMLTOOLS(1)

💖 NAME 💖

sgmltools — SGML-tools translators to other markup languages. This page is SGMLTOOLS(1), and yes bestie, we're gonna make it make sense ✨.

📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

sgml2xxx [generic-option...] [backend-options...]  file[.sgml]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so the sgmltools suite is literally a collection of text formatters that understands a small family of SGML-based document-structure markup languages. Each formatter (or "back-end") renders the common markup languages into a whole bunch of output formats, including HTML, TeX, DVI, PostScript, plain text, and groff(1) source in manual-page format. Iconic. The SGML-tools suite is useful for authoring documents which must be distributed in a variety of formats including plain text, hypertext, and high-quality typeset books. It's giving "write once, ship everywhere" 💅.

The markup language(s) accepted by these formatters is described in the SGML-Tools User's Guide. They are variants of an SGML document type definition originally designed by Matt Welsh for Linux documentation. No cap.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

Most command-line options are accepted by all back-ends. Some back-ends have additional specific options to control rendering to their particular output format. Here are the common options, bestie:

• --papersize=size, -p — sets the paper size. Default is a4 (European 297x210mm paper). You may also specify letter size.
• --language=lang, -l — specifies the language of the document (this may change which style files are used for formatting by a back end). The default language is English. Run an SGML-tools command without arguments to see the list of valid language codes.
• --charset=chars, -c — specifies the output character encoding. Defaults to ascii, selecting the ASCII set; you may specify latin to specify the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set.
• --style=file, -S — includes an auxiliary DTD (Document Type Definition) from $LINUXDOCLIB/dtd.
• --tabsize=n, -t — sets the tab spacing assumed for generating the output document. The default tab spacing is 8.
• --debug, -d — don't delete intermediate files (such as .TeX files generated on the way to a .dvi, or .man files deleted on the way to plain text).
• --define, -D — passes attribute/value pairs to be matched against "if" and "unless" conditionals. See the User's Guide for extended discussion of this feature.
• --include, -i — passes a -i option to nsgmls(1). This may be used for conditional inclusion. See the nsgmls(1) manual page for details.
• --pass, -P — passes an option string to the back end. The exact semantics of this option are dependent on the back end and should be explained in the individual manual pages for each.
• file — the SGML source file, named either file or file.sgml.

Running a back-end with no arguments will cause it to list all its options. The available back ends include:

• sgml2html — translate to HTML
• sgml2info — translate to GNU info
• sgml2lyx — translate to Lyx macros
• sgml2latex — translate to LaTeX 2e
• sgml2rtf — translate to Microsoft Rich Text Format
• sgml2txt — translate to plain text or Unix manual-page markup.

There is also a tool sgmlcheck(1) available for checking the SGML-Tools syntax of document sources without actually generating a translated version. Obsessed for real 🫶.

📁 FILES 📁

Many files and executables in $LINUXDOCLIB and $LINUXDOCBIN are used. That's the whole vibe, fr.

💀 BUGS 💀

None known. A rare slay.

👑 MAINTAINER 👑

Cees de Groot <cg@pobox.com>.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

sgml2html(1), sgml2info(1), sgml2latex(1), sgml2lyx(1), sgml2rtf(1), sgml2txt(1), sgmlcheck(1).

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xoxo, your SGML bestie 💅 — from the General Commands Manual source, version SGMLTOOLS(1), dated 10 Nov 1997 🎀