The Linuxdoc-Tools package: <https://gitlab.com/agmartin/linuxdoc-tools>

LinuxDoc is a kind of SGML DTD. It was created for the Linux HOWTOs, and is
being used by the Linux Documentation Project (LDP).

Linuxdoc-Tools is in fact a small bug-fix version of SGML-Tools 1.0.9,
and is a toolset for processing LinuxDoc DTD SGML files. It was
bundled and maintained by Taketoshi Sano <sano@debian.org>, who
carried out the big changes and wrote text below, and now is in
maintenance mode by Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org>.

SGML-Tools 1.0.9 is the last official release of SGML-Tools with direct
support for LinuxDoc DTD.  More recent version of SGML-Tools 2.x and
its successor, SGMLtools-Lite <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>
only supports the conversion from LinuxDoc DTD sgml into DocBook DTD.

But currently many HOWTO documents in LDP are still provided as
LinuxDoc DTD sgml files, and many Linux users wish to use the tool
which converts LinuxDoc DTD sgml files into various format directly.

So Taketoshi Sano made a modification on SGML-Tools 1.0.9, and
released the result as a new branch in order to avoid the confusion
with the SGML-Tools and the SGMLTools-Lite.

Since Linuxdoc-Tools is a derivative of SGML-Tools 1.0.9, it has
almost the same functions of its predecessor.  It is a text-formatting
package based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), which
allows you to produce LaTeX, HTML, GNU info, LyX, RTF, and plain text
(via groff) from a single source;

Now old command form sgml2* is obsoleted and a single command
"linuxdoc" is the prefered form.

   Old (obsoleted)	  New (prefered)
 -------------------	-----------------
  sgml2txt		 linuxdoc -B txt
  sgml2html		 linuxdoc -B html
  sgml2info		 linuxdoc -B info
  sgml2latex		 linuxdoc -B latex
  sgml2lyx		 linuxdoc -B lyx
  sgml2rtf		 linuxdoc -B rtf
  sgmlcheck		 linuxdoc -B check

This system is tailored for LinuxDoc DTD sgml files, and other DTDs
are not supported.  If you need the tool for DocBook DTD (which is
now a more popular DTD than LinuxDoc in writing technical software
documentation), then you should check SGMLTools-Lite, OpenJade,
and docbook-tools.  Check their Web sites below.

  SGMLTools-Lite: <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>

  OpenJade: <http://openjade.sourceforge.net/>

  docbook-tools: <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/docbook-tools/>

The file doc/guide.sgml is Linuxdoc DTD SGML source for the User's Guide,
originally written by Matt Welsh and updated by many people.

As you probably don't know how to format it yet, there is formatted plain
text in doc/guide.txt.  There's also guide.dvi and guide.ps, if you wish
to print them instead.  The first thing you should read is doc/guide.txt,
which explains how to install the software (namely, it tells you to
read the file INSTALL), and how to start writing documents with it.
The file doc/example.sgml is a simple example document which you can use
as a tutorial.

Linuxdoc-Tools depends on the usage of the sgml parser from Jade or
OpenJade (nsgmls or onsgmls). You have to install either of them.

Matt Welsh originally created the package under the name Linuxdoc-SGML,
using James Clark's sgmls parser and the QWERTZ DTD by Tom Gordon.
Then Greg Hankins maintained it.  It was renamed to SGML-Tools later,
and had been maintained by Cees de Groot <cg@cdegroot.com>.
SGML-Tools 2.x was significantly changed from 1.0.x, and it dropped
the direct support of Linuxdoc DTD and adopted the support of the DocBook
DTD using Jade.  SGMLtools-Lite is the latest branch from SGML-Tools 2.x,
and it is  maintained by Cees at <http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/>.

This Linuxdoc-Tools is the branch from SGML-Tools 1.0.9, and its
focus is to provide the backward compatibility for users of the old
Linuxdoc DTD.

This branch uses patch from JF ("The Japanese FAQ Project") to support
euc-jp encoded Japanese sgml file on sgml2txt, sgml2html, and sgml2latex.
(sgml2info, sgml2lyx, and sgml2rtf have no special on Japanese support.)

The JF patch for sgml-tools (v1) was originally written by Kazuyuki
Okamoto <ikko-@pacific.rim.or.jp> and Tetsu ONO <ono@jf.gee.kyoto-u.ac.jp>.
They tried to contribute their patch to the upstream, but they could not
success.  I am a member in JF project, and I have heard from them that
their patch can be used under the license of the original code.

The JF patch adds also a new DTD named "linuxdoctr", which is a variant
of "linuxdoc" with two more tags (<trans> and <tdate>, for the name of
the translator and for the date, time and version information of
the translation).  This is required by JF ("The Japanese FAQ Project",
<http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/>) because the activity in JF includes the
translation of LDP documents into Japanese, and the translation may be
often revised for the same original revision.
Improvements in fmt_txt.pl (<tt> tags in <sect> do not harm in <toc>)
are also included in the original JF patch.

From version 0.3.7, it was merged pdf patch written by Juan Jose Amor
<jjamor@hispalinux.es> for sgml-tools 1.0.9.  This patch is to use
pdfLaTeX in sgml2latex to produce nice PDF files.

More recently, it was made a distribution independent package by
Agustin Martin. Info filtering was rewritten from scratch and tons of
general changes in backends were added here and there sine then.

UTF-8 experimental support has been recently added. It is still very
experimental, but has already proven to be useful. Testing is
appreciated, as well as patches to improve it.

Experimental support for Simplied Chinese is the more recent addition,
using ctex and xelatex.

And old documents are kept in old-docs/ subdirectory.  If you are
interested in history, then please check there.

Please send me any questions or bug reports, as well as suggestions for
improvement. You can use the gitlab project for this purpose.

 Agustin Martin <agmartin at debian org>
 Taketoshi Sano <sano     at debian org>