---
name: "sgmltools-v1"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "sgml-tools"
version: "1.0.9-15"
release: "Debian 2.2 (Potato)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/sgmltools-v1"
---

# sgmltools-v1(1)

SGML-tools translators to other markup languages

## NAME

sgmltools-v1 - SGML-tools translators to other markup languages

## SYNOPSIS

**sgml2xxx \[generic-option...\] \[backend-options...\]** *file*\[.sgml\]

## DESCRIPTION

The  **sgmltools-v1** suite is a collection of text formatters which understands a small family of SGML-based document-structure markup languages. Each formatter (or "back-end") renders the common markup languages into a variety of  output formats, including HTML, TeX, DVI, PostScript, plain text, and [**groff**(1)](/groff/1.md) source in manual-page format.  The SGML-tools suite is useful for authoring documents which must be distributed in a variety of formats including plain text, hypertext, and high-quality typeset books.

The markup language(s) accepted by these formatters is described in the *SGML-Tools* User's *Guide*. They are variants of an SGML document type definition originally designed by Matt Welsh for Linux documentation.

## OPTIONS

Most command-line options are accepted by all back-ends.  Some back-ends have additional specific options to control rendering to their particular output format.  Here are the common options:

- \--papersize=*size*, -p

  Set the paper size.  Default is \`\`a4'' (European 297x210mm paper). You may also specify \`\`letter'' size.

- \--language=*lang*, -l

  Specify the language of the document (this may change which style files are used for formatting by a back end).  The default language is English. Run an SGML-tools command without arguments to see the list of valid language codes.

- \--charset=*chars*, -c

  Specify the output character encoding.  Defaults to \`\`ascii'' selecting the ASCII set; you may specify "latin" to specify the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. Also, \`\`nippon'' is required to handle the euc-jp encoded sgml file.

- \--style=*file*, -S

  Include an auxiliary DTD (Document Type Definition) from /usr/lib/sgml-tools/dtd.

- \--tabsize=*n*, -t

  Set the tab spacing assumed for generating the output document.  The default tab spacing is 8.

- \--debug, -d

  Don't delete intermediate files (such as .TeX files generated on the way to a .dvi, or .man files deleted on the way to plain text).

- \--define, -D

  Pass attribute/value pairs to be matched against "if" and "unless" conditionals.  See the User's Guide for extended discussion of this  feature. This conditionalization are handled by sgmlpre command. See [sgmlpre(1)](/sgmlpre/1.md) as well as the User's Guide.

- \--include, -i

  Pass a -i option to  [**nsgmls**(1)](/nsgmls/1.md). This may be used for conditional inclusion.  See the [**nsgmls**(1)](/nsgmls/1.md) manual page for details.

- \--pass, -P

  Pass an option string to the back end.  The exact semantics of this option are dependent on the back end and should be explained in the individual manual pages for each.

- file

  The SGML source file, named either  *file* or  *file.sgml*.

Running a back-end with no arguments will cause it to list all its options.  The available back ends include:

- sgml2html

  translate to HTML

- sgml2info

  translate to GNU info

- sgml2lyx

  translate to Lyx macros

- sgml2latex

  translate to LaTeX 2e

- sgml2rtf

  translate to Microsoft Rich Text Format

- sgml2txt

  translate to plain text or Unix manual-page markup.

There is also a tool  [**sgmlcheck**(1)](/sgmlcheck/1.md) available for checking the SGML-Tools syntax of document sources without actually generating a translated version.

## FILES

Many files and executables in /usr/lib/sgml-tools and /usr/bin are used.

## BUGS

None known.

## MAINTAINER

Cees de Groot \<cg@pobox.com\>.

## SEE ALSO

[**sgml2html**(1)](/sgml2html/1.md), [**sgml2info**(1)](/sgml2info/1.md), [**sgml2latex**(1)](/sgml2latex/1.md), [**sgml2lyx**(1)](/sgml2lyx/1.md), [**sgml2rtf**(1)](/sgml2rtf/1.md), [**sgml2txt**(1)](/sgml2txt/1.md), [**sgmlcheck**(1)](/sgmlcheck/1.md). [**sgmlpre**(1)](/sgmlpre/1.md).