After more thrashing, I find that by calling iconv directly,
with the to-encoding = ISO-8859-1 instead of us-ascii (as the
db2x_manxml script comments and docs say is its default) I
can convert sgml2xml.mxml:
iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT <sgml2xml.mxml
and the line in question becomes:
An SGML System Conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -
So with that info, I can run db2x_manxml without error:
db2x_manxml --encoding=ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT sgml2xml.mxml
but in this case the output has the un-converted utf-8 characters:
An SGML System Conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 \(XXX
where "XXX" is <226 128 148> decimal
All the config stuff at the top of db2x_manxml matches my installation,
correct paths to the docbook2X charmaps, etc. Giving options for utf8trans
doesn't make any difference.
TIA for any thoughts on the matter.
Jim