You need to format an author, a group of authors, or any other name of persons.

The DocBook stylesheets provide the template person.name for a single name or person.name.list for a group of names. For example, consider the following info element:

<info>
  <author>
    <personname>
      <firstname>Tux</firstname>
      <surname>Penguin</surname>
    </personname>
  </author>
</info>

To retrieve the author name, use the following code in your template:

<xsl:call-template name="person.name">
  <xsl:with-param name="node" select="$theauthor"/>
</xsl:call-template>

where the variable theauthor points to the author node. The previous template returns the expected string:

Tux Penguin

For a group of names it is similar, just replace person.name with person.name.list.

At first glance, names seem pretty easy to format. However, it is a little bit more complicated. For example, the title of a person, its lineage, or middle names can make it sometimes harder to extract all the information. The following author contains a title and a lineage:

<author>
  <personname>
    <honorific>Dr.</honorific>
    <firstname>Tux</firstname>
    <othername>Tuxy</othername>
    <surname>Penguin</surname>
    <lineage>Jr.</lineage>
  </personname>
</author>

Depending on what you need, the DocBook stylesheets can format the name in different ways

Dr. Tux Tuxy Penguin, Jr

Penguin, Tux

Penguin Tux [FAMILY Given]

Keep in mind, the current implementation only takes into account the first occurrence of honorific or lineage.