dbslide presentations are created from DocBook SGML source files with the help of DSSSL stylesheets and a DSSSL application. The general steps of processing a DocBook SGML document are:
Write your SGML source file in any editor. It is recommended, though not required, to use some SGML-aware editor like Emacs with the PSGML mode.
Transform your source file with the DSSSL applications Jade or OpenJade and Norman Walsh's modular DocBook stylesheets to one of the output formats: HTML, RTF, TeX, MIF.
In the case of TeX output, use TeX with the JadeTeX macros to generate PostScript or PDF output from the intermediate TeX file.
This procedure is essentially the same for dbslide presentations, but there are a few more small steps required to work around various gotchas on the way. So the modified procedure looks like this:
Write your SGML source document. Keep in mind the recommendations in the chapter Writing your SGML source file
Transform your document with Jade or OpenJade: jade -d dbslide.dsl -t sgml foo.sgml for the presentation. Use rtf, mif, or tex instead of sgml in the type switch for printed output. Make sure to select a stylesheet suitable for the desired output:
Use dbslide.dsl to generate a HTML-based screen presentation.
Use dbslideovh.dsl to create overheads or slides.
Use dbslidehdout.dsl for handouts and the speaker's copy.
Fix the JavaScript code in the HTML output with the fixdbslide shell script. There are two ways to run this script. Either give the files as arguments, e.g. with the command fixdbslide *.html. Or run the command fixdbslide -m. This will use the information that the DocBook HTML stylesheets store in HTML.manifest with each jade run to select the files that need to be fixed. This comes in handy if you have a lot of other HTML files in the same directory that don't need to be fixed.
Optional: Run the fixed HTML files through your patched HTML tidy if you want the linebreaks in a more conventional way: tidy -m *.html
Process the TeX output with the modified JadeTeX macros. Run jadetex-openany foo.tex to create a DVI file that can be further processed to a Postscript file by running: dvips -o foo.ps -t landscape foo.dvi. Run pdfjadetex-openany foo.tex to create PDF output.