Docbook stylesheet customization to create PDF in IEEE conference proceedings style
Date: 09 May 2011, revised 23 November 2020 Version: 1.2
This is a customization of the DocBook XSL Stylesheets that takes a DocBook article and converts it to a PDF file in IEEE conference proceedings style. It is released under the GNU General Public License (see LICENSE file).
This customization was originally written in 2007, revised in 2011, and further revised in 2020. However, even with revisions, it no longer conforms to current IEEE proceedings style. However, it may be useful as a starting place for subsequent customizations or for other publications that use a two-column format.
fo.xsl is a simple customization using the DocBook XSL stylesheets. You will need to edit the xsl:import line in this file to point to wherever you have placed the standard DocBook XSL stylesheets.
This has been tested with DocBook stylesheets up to 1.79.2 and snapshots through 20200603.
The Makefile uses xsltproc for XSL processing and has targets for FOP and XEP (RenderX). You will need to edit the top of this file to point to the xslt command and whichever of the xep and fop commands you want to use.
The transform has been tested with xep and fop, but works best with xep. The fop rendering does not handle footnotes cleanly.
The file authguide.xml contains a DocBook XML version of the author's guide used to create this stylesheet. You can build it by typing: make guidefop or make guidexep, depending on which formatter you choose to use.
The stylesheets are mostly complete, but not widely tested. Here are some known deficiencies:
- This customization no longer (if it ever did) conforms with IEEE's conference format. It isn't too far off, but if you use it to submit a paper to IEEE, the paper will almost surely be rejected.
- Stylesheet did not work correctly with DocBook 1.72.0 transforms, but it did work with 1.69.1 or 1.70.x, and also appears to work correctly with releases after 1.76.1. up until at least 1.79.2.
- Author processing needs to handle multiple authors better. Right now, it just lines them up vertically.
- The margins need some tweaking to be exactly correct.
- Footnotes could be handled better in fop; I'm not sure if that's a deficiency in fop or a problem in my customization. However, they work well with XEP
- Should be two lines between Abstract and next paragraph. This works with XEP, but not with fop.
If you discover problems, feel free to let me know. Or, if you fix a problem, please send me the fix and I'll fold it back in. I can't guarantee that I can fix any problems, but I'll do my best.
Richard Hamilton, 23 November 2020