Formatting DocBookXML with Lout

[Yves Forkl]

Hello,

I am in the process of formatting a PhD thesis written in a variant of 
DocBookXML 4.5 with Lout and I would kindly ask for your help on some 
problems I am currently facing.

First of all, has somebody already written any XSLT stylesheets to 
transform a DocBookXML <book> into a Lout @Book? Leveraging Michael 
Piotrowski's XSLT stylesheets for transforming a DocBookXML <article> to 
a @Report, I managed to cover some of the DocBook elements I use. But I 
would of course be glad if someone could share even more such XSLT code.

Second, my thesis' main text ends with a conclusion or summary. It is 
neither an @Appendix nor a @Chapter, consequently, it should not show 
the word "chapter" or "appendix" in its title and it should not be 
numbered. (In DocBook, there is no suitable element, so I use <chapter>, 
but must process this one specially, of course.) Which options do I need 
to set to achieve this in Lout, and what else must I do?

Third, to format the contents of <sect4> and <sect5> from DocBook, I 
need to develop my own structures in Lout as it has no predefined 
structural units at this level. The problem is that I have 
cross-references which need to point to the numbers of such units, this 
is why I need to provide these numbers somehow (both at the original 
place and in the cross reference).

I considered generating the numbers at both places in XSLT and use 
Lout's @BypassNumber mechanism, but how to make that option available 
for my new units?  Will I have to actually extend Lout at low-level to 
obtain units of this type, or is there some way to fake them (like: just 
showing a heading) and still have the numbers at my disposal? Do you 
have other suggestions on this?

  Yves