DOCBOOK: Re: psgml in emacs-20.3 question

[Mike Sangrey <mike AT sojurn.lns.pa.us>]

bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr said:

> <mfish@ebt.com> wrote:
>> Well, that all sounds a little over my head.  I use psgml, but I had to add
>> a line in my .cshrc file (I beleive that's a unix file) so, my emacs knew
>> where to find the catalog file.  (I know, so much indirection; it can make
>> a person dizzy) 

> This is a problem with your Unix. On a modern Unix, all the SGML tools
> are  integrated and use the same catalog, so you can start working
> right now.

> (I use Debian, but it should work on any recent Unix - or else drop
> it. I never had to indicate the catalog to jade or nsgmls or psgml.) 

Strickly speaking, the problem really isn't the Unix either.

First, to put something to rest, I raised the original problem, and
the solution turned out to be a version mismatch.  When I installed
the right version of psgml (a suggestion from someone on this
list--thanks again!!!), the problem went away.

If the psgml author is listening, may I suggest a version check in the
code.  Or even better, in the Makefile.

The new version of psgml (1.0.3) is configured out of the box to
look for the CATALOG files in /usr/lib/sgml.  All of my sgml files
are in /usr/lib/sgml so I'm a happy puppy.  If the sysadmin has sgml
files somewhere else, and they did not configure psgml properly, or
had some other reason, then the users need to solve the problem.

Thus, one could solve this problem in one of several ways:

  1:  Add a line to your personal profiles (.cshrc, .bashrc,
    .<whatever>rc) setting up an environment variable,
    SGML_CATALOG_FILES, so that psgml would look in the right place.

  2:  You could edit your .emacs and add
	   (setq sgml-catalog-files '("path/to/your/catalog"))
    line to it.

  3:  The sysadmin could configure psgml properly my editing the Makefile
    before typing 'make' and 'make install'.

Lastly, the original distribution I had was configured for
'/usr/local/lib/...'  I didn't want that so I slightly edited the
psgml.el file to fix it.  Also, I knew that eventually
the author would make that configurable.  With psgml-1.0.3, the author
has. Fancy that.

So, with a properly configured system it should be fairly seamless;
however, that really depends on how your sysadmin wants to support
his/her users.  The users shouldn't have to care.

  There are various permutations of these, too.  That's the beauty and
bane of Unix--you can do whatever you want in the way you want to do
it.  Peeerrrrrty neat if you ask me.

-- 
Mike Sangrey
mike@sojurn.lns.pa.us
Lancaster, Pa.
       There is no 'do' in faith, everywhere present within it is 'done'.
             And faith should commend itself from within every 'do'.