*** This is the README file for the sgml-tools package, version 1.0.something 

*** For more uptodate information, visit the sgml-tools homepage
    at http://pobox.com/~cg/sgmltools

SGML-Tools is a text-formatting package based on SGML (Standard 
Generalized Markup Language), which allows you to produce LaTeX,
HTML, GNU info, LyX, RTF, and plain text (via groff) from a single source;
due to the flexible nature of SGML many other target formats are possible.

This system is tailored for writing technical software documentation, 
an example of which are the Linux HOWTO documents. However, there is nothing
Linux-specific about this package; it can be used for many other types of
documentation on many other systems. It should be useful for all kinds of 
printed and online documentation.

The current release version of sgml-tools can be found at
 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/text/sgml-tools-1.0.x.tar.gz

Hacker versions (1.1.x where x > 0) can be found at the Website above and
probably on some assorted FTP sites. Note that there are no guarantees about
stability here.

You can join the sgml-tools mailing list by sending mail to
majordomo@via.ecp.fr with 'subscribe sgml-tools' in the message
body.  The list address is sgml-tools@via.ecp.fr.

The file doc/guide.sgml is SGML source for the User's Guide. As you 
probably don't know how to format it yet, there is formatted plain text
in doc/guide.txt. There's also guide.dvi and guide.ps, if you wish to
print them instead. The first thing you should read is doc/guide.txt, 
which explains how to install the software (namely, it tells you to
read the file INSTALL), and how to start writing documents with it.
The file doc/example.sgml is a simple example document which you
can use as a tutorial. 

For real-life examples of uses of SGML-Tools, look at the Linux HOWTOs 
on sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/sgml. These HOWTOs 
are written in SGML and automatically translated into PostScript, DVI, and 
ASCII using this system. You can also look at the URL
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/
which has HTML formats of many Linux HOWTOs, produced using SGML-Tools. 

SGML-Tools is based on James Clark's sgmls parser, and the QWERTZ
DTD by Tom Gordon.  The package was originally created by Matt Welsh, 
and maintained by Greg Hankins under the name Linuxdoc-SGML.  It was 
renamed to SGML-Tools, because it's not really Linux specific anymore.
The tools are currently maintained by Cees de Groot <cg@pobox.com>.

Please send me any questions or bug reports, as well as suggestions for 
improvement. 

Share and enjoy,
Matt Welsh
Greg Hankins
Cees de Groot
(and other contributers, see CONTRIBUTORS)
