A text-formatting package based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), which allows you to produce TeX/DVI/PS/PDF, HTML, RTF, and plain ASCII (currently via w3m by default) from a single source with other recommended and suggested packages; due to the flexible nature of SGML, many other target formats are possible.

This tool can not handle DocBook XML yet. For DocBook SGML only.

HTML can be generated without any other Debian text processing package, but for the other formats the appropriate packages have to be installed. You need to install lynx or w3m for ASCII text output (w3m is the default txt backend). Also jadetex is required for PS and PDF, and linuxdoc-tools for ld2db conversion.

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 package was formerly called linuxdoc-sgml because it originates from the Linux Documentation Project (LDP). The name has been changed into sgmltools to make it clearer that there is no Linux-specific stuff included in this package.

This is the latest version of the sgmltools series and the successor of sgmltools v2.