$Id: README,v 1.1 2000/03/24 09:14:37 cdegroot Exp $

sgmltools package README.

For now, a collection of notes pertaining to the sgmltools package's 
functionality. For notes on the sgmltools build environment, see the
sgmltools-base distribution's top-level directory.


* SGML Open catalogs

SGMLtools interprets most identifiers as public identifiers until proven
otherwise, and therefore uses SGML_CATALOG_FILES in order to resolve these
names. If SGML_CATALOG_FILES isn't set in the environment, a default
value of "/etc/sgml/catalog" is used.

* --dsssl_spec option

When specifying a DSSSL-File with the --dssl_spec, you can specify either
one of a) a file, b) a public identifier, c) an alias (see below). The
specification will be checked for a file, then subjected to alias expansion,
then re-checked for a file, and finally looked up in the catalogs.

* DSSSL Aliases

Files can be a long run of characters away - whether specified by
public identifier or by system identifier. Therefore SGMLtools uses
alias files to save on typing on the command-line. As command-line 
specified files will be almost always DSSSL files, it is reasonable
to see this functionality as providing DSSSL aliases.

The alias files read, in order and when available, are:

/etc/sgml/aliases
~/.sgmlaliases

These files are simply

alias identifier

sequences, where identifier may be quoted and the separation may be any
run of whitespace characters. Empty lines and '#'-lead comments are
allowed. So, instead of typing:

sgmltools ... -d /usr/local/share/sgml/dsssl/mystuff/html.dsl ...

or 

sgmltools ... -d "-//Local//MyStuff HTML stylesheet//EN" ...

you can just make an alias and get away with typing

sgmltools ... -d myhtmlstuff ...