3.5. What if there is no parameter for the thing I want to change?

In that case, you have 2 choices:

  1. If the thing you want to control would be generally useful to other users of the DocBook XSLs, submit an RFE to the maintainers.

  2. Change the behavior of the XSLs by overriding the templates.

    Overriding the templates requires that you know 1) Enough XSL to change the right code, and 2) what you want the resulting XML to do. So if you're changing the fo stylesheets, you have to know enough FO to know what you want the stylesheets to do.

Bob Stayton's book, DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide , is essential reading for learning how to customize the DocBook XSLs.