HOW-TO:  Compiling the Mercurial Book
======================================

This Mercurial Book is written in DocBook 4.5.

The goal of this document is to give simple instructions to anyone who
wants to compile this book into a useful format, like HTML or PDF.  It
should state *exactly* which tools to use, and how to invoke them, in
simplest terms.

Table of Contents:

  I. PRIMER
 II. COMPILING THE DOCS
III. HACKING ON THE DOCS

I. PRIMER

  DocBook has a tortured, confusing history.  Before you do anything,
  take a look at Eric Raymond's excellent "DocBook Demystification HOWTO":

      http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DocBook-Demystification-HOWTO/

  It's very short and clears up many things.


II. COMPILING THE DOCS


1. Install XML DTD and XSL stylesheets for DocBook

      % sudo apt-get install docbook-xml docbook-xsl

2. Install libxml2-utils

      % sudo apt-get install libxml2-utils

3. Install graph drawing tools

      % sudo apt-get install graphviz inkscape

4. Install pdf support

      % sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk docbook-xsl-saxon libsaxon-java fop

  The Makefile will actually invoke tools/fop/fop.sh, you should do
  some trick, let fop's CLASSPATH include saxon.jar and docbook-xsl-saxon.jar .

5. Make
  Run 'make' for more details, for example:

  * make all document(pdf, html and html-single for all languages)
      % make all

  * make english document(pdf, html and html-single for all languages)
      % make LINGUA=en all

  * make Chinese document(pdf, html and html-single for all languages)
      % make LINGUA=zh all

  * make Chinese pdf document
      % make LINGUA=zh pdf

III. HACKING ON THE DOCS

In addition to everything in section II:


1. Get a nice editing environment for SGML/XML.

  This isn't strictly required, but it's nice when your editor
  colorizes things, understands the DTD, tells you what tags you can
  insert, etc.

  If you use emacs, we recommend the PSGML major-mode.  Most free
  operating systems package it, or its home page is here:

      http://www.lysator.liu.se/projects/about_psgml.html

  If you use vim, you might check out xmledit, at:

      http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=301


2. Get a validating parser.

  Actually, if you have what you need to compile the documentation,
  then you almost certainly have an XML validator installed already -
  it is called xmllint, and comes as part of libxml2.

  The makefile is preconfigured with a suitable invocation of it,
  so simply run:

      $ make validate

3. Read about DocBook.

  You'll want to get real intimate with a DocBook reference, such as
  can be found at:  http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/