It's pretty simple to generate output. Just cd to the directory of the book you wish to generate, and use the make command, followed by the kind of output you want. (Right now we're mainly using html, pdf, and help; but if you need ps, dvi, or tex, they are also possible.) For example, to make up the Cascade DataHub in HTML, just follow these steps:

What happens behind the scenes is the Makefile calls cogsgml, Cogent's SGML document-processing shell script. cogsgml sets up the subdirectories and a few other tasks, and calls jade, which reads and processes the SGML code. Any validation errors will be reported as shown in the example. Next collateindex.pl creates two indices, one for the book itself, the other a copy of the Cogent Documentation bookset index. Finally, the Makefile updates the .html file with the touch command to create a timestamp.

As explained in the Tools Overview section, you have to make HTML output twice to ensure the indexing is correct. Since there will have been no change to the target files, the command make html won't work twice. Use the make again command instead.

The processor feedback from make pdf is substantially more that what is shown above--usually screenfuls of LaTeX warnings and other messages scroll past. Generally you can ignore it all. Unless you get an actual error message, you're home free.