Documentation with Style(sheets)

Played around with the DocBook->HTML stylesheets and their many parameters. I managed to turn off the messy inline CSS that's been in the HTML output since (I assume) forever, and get a much more manageable table of contents for the user guide. Here's a super-mini HOWTO on customizing your KDE documentation:

1. Create a file with the following content:
   

   
   <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
   
                   version='1.0'>
   
   
   
     <xsl:import href="KDEDIR/share/apps/ksgmltools2/customization/kde-chunk.xsl"/>
   
   
   
   </xsl:stylesheet>
   
   

   
   but replace KDEDIR with your own $KDEDIR. Save it as, say, mystyle.xsl


2. Take a look at The DocBook Parameter Reference (from where I for the example stylesheet above), choose a parameter you like the look of, and add an appropriate <xsl:param> line below <xsl:import>. A neat one to play around with would be html.stylesheet: you can change the CSS stylesheet used by the output HTML to one of your own devising.


3. Repeat step 2 for as many paramters as you like


4. Run "meinproc --stylesheet /path/to/mystyle.xsl index.docbook" in a directory containing some KDE documentation, and view the resulting HTML

I think you can also do this in a more automatic way, and on a per-document basis, using processing instructions like <?dbhtml html.stylesheet="foo.css"?>, but I haven't tried it yet.

Meanwhile, I have to go back to being eaten alive by every biting insect in Cardiff...