Is there a nice XSL stylesheet for client-side DocBook rendering?

Question

I want the DocBook documents in my SVN repository to look nice if someone looks at them in a web browser. I've started to write a CSS stylesheet, but I think that it will have significant limitations -- particularly ones regarding hyperlinks.

There is a large body of DocBook XSL stylesheets at the DocBook site , but they don't seem to be appropriate for browser rendering. I don't want to generate static documents and put them into SVN. I want them to be basically readable for other developers without much hassle.

I could write my own browser-appropriate XSL stylesheet to convert DocBook to HTML, but it seems like someone else must have already done this. I just don't know where to find it.

Answer 1

In a past life I used wysiwygdocbook: http://www.cs.hs-rm.de/~werntges/proj/wysiwyg-dbk01.html

Answer 2

You are right, the DocBook XSL stylesheets are very heavy, and are not really suitable for running in a browser. The DocBook Wiki lists some CSS stylesheets, perhaps one of those might work for you?

The only one I have experience of is the one which XMLMind XML Editor apparently uses to present DocBook documents.

Answer 3

I've done some XSLT+CSS very basic and incomplete implementation for browserside DocBook styling. You can check it out here http://github.com/arsi/db2xhtml

But I would like to see more advanced project if available somewhere!

Answer 4

[Edited because I misread the question]

You certainly wouldn't want to run the stylesheets via a browser and the PI but then you wouldn't want to do that for any reasonably complex content. Do it server side if you're running over a web server or as a batch task. Is there any way that you can interpose a server side process in svn?

DocBook is a complex 'language' and capturing even most of the subleties of DocBook is very difficult. Using the DocBook XSL is not complex at all and I really would recommend you go in that direction if you can. The stylesheets are designed to be customised and are extremely well documented by Bob Stayton in DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide.

Answer 5

After quite a bit of searching, I believe the answer is "there is not a nice XSL stylesheet for client-side DocBook rendering," besides the bespoke ones like the one I implemented.

Answer 6

Typically you'd produce a 'rendition' for reading/display. The rendition can either be PDF, a single HTML page, or set of HTML pages. It's rare that you deliver docbook directly to web.

• Can I ask what you're trying to accomplish and why?
• Is this for internal delivery or external?

I hate getting the question that asks "can your technology do X?" It assumes a lot of knowledge about the product (plus, usually the answer is "yes" but that doesn't answer the real question). It's always best when I ask -- "what are you trying to accomplish" -- so I can tell you whether or not any piece of technology is a good fit (or I can point you to some other piece that's a much better fit, or a better way to go about it).