PDF customization questions from newbie

[John Rossmann <rossmannjohn@yahoo.com>]

Hi, recently I got started with my first docbook document, and I am very 
satisfied with the great possibilities to publish a number of output formats 
from a single structured document.

Coming from LaTeX, I am looking for possibilities to customize high quality PDF 
output. For example, I'd like to modify paragraph indentation, font sizes, line 
spacing, page numbering, page headers and footers etc. Ideally I am looking for 
a gallery of document layouts from which I can choose one and maybe fine tune, 
as it is possible under LaTeX by choosing from a large number of document 
classes (like e.g. koma script).

Some help is given at http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/PrintOutput.html. But 
those  options are too limited to do things like putting a logo into the page 
header, numbering frontmatter pages like i,ii,iii,iv,... and only the main 
document 1,2,3,..., putting a light yellow background below verbatim (code) text 

boxes, etc. (If someone points me to an explanation how to achieve these three 
options - logo, page numbering, code background color - I might have a better 
idea where to look for other solutions in the future.)
 
Should I go the DBLatex way and change the intermediate LaTeX file to use the 
desired document class? Or can I find an idiot-proof PDF customization tutorial 
somewhere that doesn't require me to learn the low-level PDF language?

Thank you
Johnny