Tools
The FDP uses a number of different software tools to help
manage the FreeBSD documentation, convert it to different output
formats, and so on. You will need to use these tools yourself if
you are to work with the FreeBSD documentation.
All these tools are available as FreeBSD Ports and Packages,
greatly simplifying the work you have to do to install
them.
You will need to install these tools before you work through
any of the examples in later chapters. The actual usage of these
tools is covered in later chapters.
Use textproc/docproj if possible
You can save yourself a lot of time if you install the
textproc/docproj port. This is a
meta-port which does not contain any software
itself. Instead, it depends on various other ports being installed
correctly. Installing this port should
automatically download and install all of the packages listed in this
chapter that you need.
One of the packages that you might need is the JadeTeX macro set.
In turn, this macro set requires TeX to be installed. TeX is a large
package, and you only need it if you want to produce Postscript or PDF
output.
To save yourself time and space you must specify whether or not you
want JadeTeX (and therefore TeX) installed when you install this port.
Either do:
&prompt.root; make JADETEX=yes install
or
&prompt.root; make JADETEX=no install
as necessary. Alternatively you may install textproc/docproj-jadetex or textproc/docproj-nojadetex. These slave ports
define the JADETEX variable for you, therefore they
will install the same suite of applications on your machine.
Note that you can produce only HTML or ASCII
text output if you do not install JadeTeX.
PostScript or PDF output require TeX.
Mandatory tools
Software
These programs are required before you can usefully work with the
FreeBSD documentation, and they will allow you to convert the
documentation to HTML, plain text, and RTF formats. They are all
included in textproc/docproj.
SP
(textproc/sp)
A suite of applications, including a validating SGML parser,
and an SGML normaliser.
Jade
(textproc/jade)
A DSSSL implementation. Used for converting marked up
documents to other formats, including HTML and TeX.
Tidy
(www/tidy)
An HTML 'pretty printer', used to reformat some of the
automatically generated HTML so that it is easier to
follow.
Links
(www/links)
A text-mode WWW browser that can also convert
HTML files to plain text.
peps
(graphics/peps)
Some of the documentation includes images, some of which are
stored as EPS files. These must be converted to PNG before most
web browsers will display them.
DTDs and Entities
These are the DTDs and entity sets used by the FDP. They need to
be installed before you can work with any of the documentation.
HTML DTD (textproc/html)
HTML is the markup language of choice for the World Wide
Web, and is used throughout the FreeBSD web site.
DocBook DTD (textproc/docbook)
DocBook is designed for marking up technical documentation.
All the FreeBSD documentation is written in DocBook.
ISO 8879 entities
(textproc/iso8879)
19 of the ISO 8879:1986 character entity sets used by many
DTDs. Includes named mathematical symbols, additional
characters in the 'Latin' character set (accents, diacriticals,
and so on), and Greek symbols.
Stylesheets
The stylesheets are used when converting and formatting the
documentation for display on screen, printing, and so on.
Modular DocBook Stylesheets
(textproc/dsssl-docbook-modular)
The Modular DocBook Stylesheets are used when converting
documentation marked up in DocBook to other formats, such as
HTML or RTF.
Optional tools
You do not need to have any of the following installed. However,
you may find it easier to work with the documentation if you do, and
they may give you more flexibility in the output formats that can be
generated.
Software
JadeTeX and
teTeX
(print/jadetex and
print/teTeX)
Jade and
teTeX are used to convert DocBook
documents to DVI, Postscript, and PDF formats. The
JadeTeX macros are needed in order to
do this.
If you do not intend to convert your documentation to one of
these formats (i.e., HTML, plain text, and RTF are sufficient)
then you do not need to install
JadeTeX and
teTeX. This can be a significant
space and time saver, as teTeX is
over 30MB in size.
If you decide to install
JadeTeX and
teTeX then you will need to
configure teTeX after
JadeTeX has been installed.
print/jadetex/pkg-message contains
detailed instructions explaining what you need to do.
Emacs or
XEmacs
(editors/emacs or
editors/xemacs)
Both these editors include a special mode for editing
documents marked up according to an SGML DTD. This mode
includes commands to reduce the amount of typing you need, and
help reduce the possibility of errors.
You do not need to use them; any text editor can be used to
edit marked up documents. You may find they make you more
efficient.
If anyone has recommendations for other software that is useful
when manipulating SGML documents, please let &a.nik; know, so they
can be added to this list.