Bob Stayton: Hot Off the Press...

Michael Smith reported that the third edition of "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide" by Bob Stayton is now available!

If you spend any time on the docbook lists, you will quickly realize that Bob is THE go-to guy for complex DocBook problems, with Michael and Jirka closely behind.

If you spend any time with DocBook stylesheets, you should also quickly realize that YOU NEED THIS BOOK!

Bob has added over 150 pages with this edition, so it's by no means a minor rev.

Check it out at: http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/!

See also: DocBook

A Brand New Day

I started my new job at Flatirons Solutions, but I'm not the only one with a fresh start this week!

Congratulations to my sister, Heather, and brother-in-law JC on the birth of their new baby girl last night!

Kiera Lynne was 7 pounds, 9 ounces, 19 inches long. Very good size, and they were worried that she might come too early.

We're going to see them on Saturday, and I can't wait to hold my new neice.

All of my kids are very excited about their new cousin, too.

Children are, indeed, a blessing from God. And it's really a blessing when they are out of diapers, too! ;-)

See also: General

Former astronaut to head up NASA

Looks like NASA will get a new chief! Check the stories out at: news.google.com

Gregory has a pretty impressive bio.

and from http://academy.gsfc.nasa.gov/2001/Speakers/Gregory.html:

He has also been an astronaut on several shuttle missions, serving as both pilot and commander. Before that, he acquired an impressive military background, retiring from the Airforce as a Colonel after logging 7,000 flight hours and serving as an engineering test pilot for both NASA and the Air Force.

Mr. Gregory attended both the Air Force Academy and George Washington University, and his academic and career honors are numerous.

I don't know his stance on manned missions to the Moon and Mars, but I hope he is for them. I would sure like to see a new era of manned space exploration ushered in! And if you need any volunteers... I'm there, man!

See also: Space

Scotty here, one to beam out...

Folks,

it is with fond memories of every one I have worked with during my 9+ years of service at Sun, that I announce my departure.

I have been given an exciting opportunity as an XML and content management Solutions Architect at Flatirons Solutions (http://www.flatironssolutions.com) in Boulder.

While at Sun, I have worked for SunSoft (Solaris Tech Pubs), Sun Educational Services, Global eServices Engineering, Global Knowledge Engineering, and CNS Knowledge, Data and Operations.

I've helped create online documentation for Solstice Backup, Solstice Job Scheduler and the Solaris Administration Guides, created education.central, worked on the next generation of SunSolve, the Astoria, Voyager and KASP content management systems, and the Service Parts Repository (SPRuce) and the Sun System Handbook, and was consistently one of the top 15 most popular blogs on blogs.sun.com.

God willing, our paths will again cross some day. It has been an honor and priviledge to work with all of you incredibly talented folks. Sorry if I missed anybody. Please forward to anyone you think might be interested in hearing the news.

My last day at Sun will be February 17th, but you can continue to follow my adventures at: http://shudson310.blogspot.com

Please stay in touch!

Best regards,

Scott Hudson

See also: General

Time for an IPA

Norm Walsh has just released the 9th version of DocBookNG, code named: IPA

This release includes:

• Added citerefentry and citebiblioid to the list of elements that can appear in bibliography entries; removed titleabbrev.

• Reduced the content model of a bunch of inlines (command and others that were way to broad).

• Added link, xref, superscript, and subscript to the list of “ubiquitous” inlines.

• Added date to the list of publishing inlines.

• Added some inlines to computeroutput and userinput.

• Added some new exclusions (preventing admonitions and formal objects from being nested; removing some of the same from footnote).

• Removed the highlights element. A candidate for the role attribute if I ever saw one.

• Fixed bug that didn't allow sect1 in article when numbered sections are included.

Check it out!

BTW, Norm, I know I always bug you about this, but can you please create a version of IPA for Simplified DocBook?

See also: DocBook

Storm Chaser Convention coming to Denver!

The 7th Annual National Storm Chasers Convention is coming to Denver from February 18-20th!

Speakers include: Dr. Al Bedard, Dr. Erik Rasmussen, Dr. Howie Bluestein, Dr. Josh Wurman, Dr. Greg Forbes, Tim Marshall, Tim Vasquez, Scott Blair, Jim Reed, Jim Edds, John Davies, and more.

Complete details and registration is available at: http://chaserconvention.com/site/

Last year, I attended Tim Vasquez's Severe Weather Forecasting class after the convention. While it was very informative, it's definitely NOT for the uninitiated! I have taken the Meteorology and Climatology undergrad courses at Colorado State University, and was a little rusty in the class. If you want to go, definitely bone up on your map skills (identifying and drawing front lines from isobar readings, etc.)

Not sure if I'll be able to go at all this year, as I'm starting a new job on the 21st, but more on that later...

If you want some local involvement with weather reporting, you should also check out CoCoRAHS! There is also a great article on CoCoRAHS at: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/weather/4157645/detail.html

See also: Weather

Connor's Weather Service: That's my boy!

Nick O'Kelly from 9 News in Denver requested kids send in audition tapes for a chance to be on a morning weathercast with the Weather Whiz Kids contest.

My oldest son, Connor, and I went to work gathering the latest weather data from Denver/Boulder Severe Weather at the National Weather Service.

We put together a script, and he drew up a map of Colorado with a few significant current temps from the viewing area.

Next we did a practice run (we only had a week to get a tape/DVD in for the studio deadline), and then filmed it on our new Sony digital camcorder.

We took the camera up to the iMac and captured the clips in iMovie, put together a quick intro image in iDVD, dragged the iMovie over, and burned the DVD!

I sent it in, and we waited, and waited. Yesterday, during the morning show, they featured Connor's audition! We didn't tape it, unfortunately, but lots of friends and family saw the segment and called or emailed in to our new TV star!

We still don't know if he's won a spot on site at the studio, but his clip is featured on the 9 News website at: http://www.9news.com/

I'm so proud of my little weatherman!!!

See also: Weather

DocBook XSL 1.68.0 released

Michael Smith has announced the 1.68.0 release of the DocBook XSL stylesheets!

Here is the content of the announcement:

Version 1.68.0 of the DocBook XSL stylesheets is now available for download from the DocBook SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/

This release adds some significant new features, particularly for FO/PDF output.

As with all DocBook Project dot-0 releases, this release should be considered somewhat unstable and will likely be followed by a stable 1.68.1 release within the next two weeks (to correct problems reported with the dot-0 release).

Among the user-visible changes:

FO

• Moved footnote properties to attribute-sets.
• Added support for side floats, margin notes, and custom floats.
• Added new parameters body.start.indent and body.end.indent to the set.flow.properties template.
• Added support for xml:id
• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added index.entry.properties attribute-set to support customization of index entries.
• Added set.flow.properties template call to each fo:flow to support customizations entry point.
• Add support for @floatstyle in figure
• Moved hardcoded properties for index division titles to the index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• Added support for table-layout="auto" for XEP.
• Added index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• $verbose parameter is now passed to most elements.
• Added refentry to toc in part, as it is permitted by the DocBook schema/ DTD.
• Added backmatter elements and article to toc in part, since they are permitted by the DocBook schema/DTD.
• Added mode="toc" for simplesect, since it is now permitted in the toc if simplesect.in.toc is set.
• Moved hard-coded properties to nongraphical.admonintion.properties and graphical.admonition.properties attribute sets.
• Added support for sidebar-width and float-type processing instructions in sidebar.
• For tables with HTML markup elements, added support for dbfo bgcolor PI, the attribute-sets named table.properties, informaltable.properties, table.table.properties, and table.cell.padding. Also added support for the templates named table.cell.properties and table.cell.block.properties so that tabstyles can be implemented. Also added support for tables containing only tr instead of tbody with tr.
• Added new paramater hyphenate.verbatim.characters which can specify characters after which a line break can occur in verbatim environments. This parameter can be used to extend the initial set of characters which contain only space and non-breakable space.
• Added itemizedlist.label.markup to enable selection of different bullet symbol. Also added several potential bullet characters, commented out by default.
• Enabled all id's in XEP output for external olinking.

HTML

• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added support for xml:id
• refsynopsisdiv as a section for counting section levels

Images

• Added new SVG admonition graphics and navigation images.

Thanks Michael, Bob, Jirka, and everyone who contributed to this release!

Please give the stylesheets a try, and report any problems ASAP!

See also: DocBook