ANNOUNCE: docbook-lint: a tool for checking DocBook source files

[David Malcolm]

[apologies for broad cross-posting]

I wanted to do a bit of checking of DocBook XML files beyond just DTD
validation, and couldn't find a tool to so this (is there one?), so I've
hacked one together (GPL license, python implementation)

In the spirit of "release early, release often", the code is in public
Subversion here:
https://testing.108.redhat.com/source/browse/testing/trunk/incubator/docbooklint/?rev=259

and the mailing list for the project is:
dev at testing.108.redhat.com
(see https://testing.108.redhat.com/servlets/ProjectMailingListList for
archives and subscription info)

So far all it does is verify that text inside a <computeroutput> element
has been properly line-wrapped [1], but the framework is hopefully clean
enough to be expanded to cover other checks people might want to
implement that aren't so easy to do with DTDs, for instance:
- enforcing naming policies for node ids
- spell-checking
etc - any other ideas?  Patches welcome.

Hopefully this will be of use to various projects with DocBook
toolchains.

Dave Malcolm

[1] I ran into some problems where line-endings of screen dumps in my
DocBook files got garbled, and verbatim monospace rendering was looking
terrible: the tool detects this now.