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Andreas Hoenen

This manual page was written for the &debian; system (but it may be used by others).

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the &gnu; General Public License, Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On &debian; systems, the complete text of the &gnu; General Public License can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL`.

March 6, 2012
dblatex
1
Dblatex Manual Page
dblatex

# dblatex

convert DocBook to LaTeX, DVI, PostScript, and PDF

          dblatex
          options
          {file | -}

## Description

This manual page briefly documents the `dblatex` command. For more details read the PDF manual; see below.

`dblatex` is a program that transforms your SGML/XML DocBook documents to DVI, PostScript or PDF by translating them into pure LaTeX as a first process. MathML 2.0 markups are supported, too. It started as a clone of DB2LaTeX.

## Options

A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the PDF manual.

`-h`
`--help`

  Show a help message and exit.

`-b backend`
`--backend=backend`

  Backend driver to use: `pdftex` (default), `dvips`, or `xetex`. See also .

`-B`
`--no-batch`

  All the tex output is printed.

`-c config`
`-S config`
`--config=config`

  Configuration file. A configuration file can be used to group all the options and customizations to apply. See .

`-d`
`--debug`

  Debug mode: Keep the temporary directory in which dblatex actually works. explains how you can use it.

`-D`
`--dump`

  Dump the error stack when an error occurs (debug purpose).

`-e indexstyle`
`--indexstyle indexstyle`

  Index style file to pass to `makeindex` instead of the dblatex default index style.

`-f figure_format`
`--fig-format=figure_format`

  Input figure format: `fig`, `eps`. Used when not deduced from figure file extension. See also .

`-F input_format`
`--input-format=input_format`

  Input file format: `sgml`, `xml` (default).

`-i texinputs`
`--texinputs texinputs`

  Path added to `TEXINPUTS`

`-I figure_path`
`--fig-path=figure_path`

  Additional lookup path of the figures. See .

`-l bst_path`
`--bst-path=bst_path`

  Additional lookup path of the BibTeX styles. See .

`-L bib_path`
`--bib-path=bib_path`

  Additional lookup path of the BibTeX databases. See .

`-m xslt`
`--xslt=xslt`

  XSLT engine to use. The available engines are: xsltproc (default), 4xslt.

`-o output`
`--output=output`

  Output filename. When not specified, the input filename is used, with the suffix of the output format. The option is ignored if several books are chunked from a set. In this case the `-O` option is applied instead.

`-O output_dir`
`--output-dir=output_dir`

  Output directory of the books built from a set. When not specified, the current working directory is used instead. The option is ignored if a single document is outputed, and the `-o` is taken into account.

`-p xsl_user`
`--xsl-user=xsl_user`

  An XSL user stylesheet to use. Several user stylesheets can be specified, but the option order is meaningful: a user stylesheet takes precedence over previously defined user stylesheets. See .

`-P param=value`
`--param=param=value`

  Set an XSL parameter from command line. See .

`-q`
`--quiet`

  Less verbose, showing only TeX output messages and error messages.

`-r script`
`--texpost=script`

  Script called at the very end of the tex compilation. Its role is to modify the tex file or one of the compilation files before the last round. See .

`-s latex_style`
`--texstyle=latex_style`

  Latex style to apply. It can be a package name, or directly a latex package path. A package name must be without a directory path and without the '.sty' extension. On the contrary, a full latex package path can contain a directory path, but must ends with the '.sty' extension. See .

`-t format`
`--type=format`

  Output format. Available formats: `tex`, `dvi`, `ps`, `pdf` (default).

`--dvi`

  DVI output. Equivalent to `-tdvi`.

`--pdf`

  PDF output. Equivalent to `-tpdf`.

`--ps`

  PostScript output. Equivalent to `-tps`.

`-T style`
`--style=style`

  Output style, predefined are: `db2latex`, `simple`, `native` (default). See .

`-v`
`--version`

  Display the dblatex version.

`-V`
`--verbose`

  Verbose mode, showing the running commands

`-x xslt_options`
`--xslt-opts=xslt_options`

  Arguments directly passed to the XSLT engine

`-X`
`--no-external`

  Disable the external text file support. This support is needed for callouts on external files referenced by `textdata` or `imagedata`, but it can be disabled if the document does not contain such callouts. Disabling this support can improve the processing performance for big documents.

## Files and Directories

`$HOME/.dblatex/`

  User configuration directory.

`/etc/dblatex/`

  System-wide configuration directory.

The predefined output styles are located in the installed package directory.

## Environment Variables

`DBLATEX_CONFIG_FILES`

  Extra configuration directories that may contain some dblatex configuration files.

## Examples

To produce `myfile.pdf` from `myfile.xml`:

    dblatex myfile.xml

To set some XSL parameters from the command line:

    dblatex -P latex.babel.language=de myfile.xml

To use the db2latex output style:

    dblatex -T db2latex myfile.xml

To apply your own latex style:

    dblatex -s mystyle myfile.xml
    dblatex -s /path/to/mystyle.sty myfile.xml

To pass extra arguments to the XSLT engine:

    dblatex -x "--path /path/to/load/entity" myfile.xml

To use `dblatex` and profiling:

    xsltproc --param profile.attribute "'output'" \
             --param profile.value "'pdf'" \
             /path/to/profiling/profile.xsl \
             myfile.xml | dblatex -o myfile.pdf -

To build a set of books:

    dblatex -O /path/to/chunk/dir -Pset.book.num=all myfile.xml

## See also

The program is documented fully by "DocBook to LaTeX Publishing - User Manual" available in the package's documentation directory.