Bug#822181: ITP: python3-tldp -- automatic publishing tool for DocBook, Linuxdoc and Asciidoc

["Martin A. Brown" <martin@linux-ip.net>]

Subject: ITP: python3-tldp -- automatic publishing tool for DocBook, Linuxdoc and Asciidoc
Package: wnpp
Owner: Martin A. Brown <martin@linux-ip.net>
Severity: wishlist

* Package name    : python3-tldp
  Version         : 0.7.5
  Upstream Author : Martin A. Brown <martin@linux-ip.net>
* URL             : https://github.com/tLDP/python-tldp
* License         : MIT
  Programming Lang: Python
  Description     : automatic publishing tool for DocBook, Linuxdoc and Asciidoc

This package was written for the Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) to help
with management and publication automation of source documents. The primary
interface provided is a command-line tool called ldptool. The canonical
location of this software is:

The ldptool executable can:

  crawl through any number of source collection directories
  crawl through a single output collection
  match the sources to the outputs (based on document stem name)
  describe supported source formats (--formats)
  describe the meaning of document status (--statustypes)
  describe the collection by type and status (--summary)
  list out individual document type and status (--list)
  build the expected (non-configurable) set of outputs (--build)
  build and publish the outputs (--publish)
  produce runnable shell script to STDOUT (--script)

The tools in this package process source documents in the TLDP document
repository and generate the following set of outputs from each source
document.

  .pdf, PDF
  .txt, text
  -single.html, a one-page HTML document
  .html, a multipage HTML document
  (We may add other output formats; an epub format is under consideration.)

Supported input formats are:

  Asciidoc
  Linuxdoc
  Docbook SGML 3.x (though deprecated, please no new submissions)
  Docbook SGML 4.x
  Docbook XML 4.x
  Docbook XML 5.x (basic support, as of 2016-03-10)


Comments:

  * The package is in use by TLDP.  It could be used by anybody for generating
    outputs from the source formats listed above.

  * This package relies on ldp-docbook-stylesheets (ldp-docbook-xsl and
    ldp-docbook-dsssl), but there's a problem with the ldp-docbook-xsl
    stylesheets, which were released as experimental by David Horton of TLDP
    in 2004.

  * Thus, this ITP implies a repair of the ldp-docbook-xsl stylesheets.  The
    main (current) problems:

      * fop-1.1, available under Debian jessie cannot use the ldp-docbook-xsl
        stylesheets, because of significant development in the FOP toolchain
        since 2004; the XSL stylesheets must be updated.  There are two simple
        XSL parameters that I can set to correct this.
      * DocBook 5.x (the fully-namespaced XML version of DocBook) did not
        exist when ldp-docbook-xsl stylesheets were first born.  They need to
        be added to the package.

  * There is one suboptimality--that the LDP stylesheets do not work correctly
    with catalogs.  I would like to correct that, as well (if I can).


-- 
Martin A. Brown
http://linux-ip.net/