gtk-doc woes

[Carol Spears]

not this group also!

i had no problems editing ./autogen.sh where necessary since
xfce-developers and debian have a different idea of which auto* versions
get the symlink.  

now i am faced with this:
carol at treva:/build/xfce/trunk/libxfce4mcs$ ./autogen.sh 
xdt-autogen: You must have "gtk-doc" installed. You can get if from
             http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/.

and this:
carol at treva:/build/xfce/trunk/libxfcegui4$ ./autogen.sh
xdt-autogen: You must have "gtk-doc" installed. You can get if from
             http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/.

and also this:
carol at treva:/build/xfce/trunk/libxfcegui4$ whereis xdt-autogen
xdt-autogen: /usr/local/bin/xdt-autogen
carol at treva:/build/xfce/trunk/libxfcegui4$ /usr/local/bin/xdt-autogen 
xdt-autogen: You must have "gtk-doc" installed. You can get if from
             http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/.

i really really really have an issue with docbook.  not docbook itself,
but the need to install all of that stuff so that you can make sgml
files -- and i think that this is the only reason that there exists such
a complex system whose job is to simply produce html.

i whined and threw a righteous fit until the gimp developers found a way
to allow autogen to do its things without the need to make the
documentation.  would it be possible for me to ask nicely here and get
this?  when i build gimp, i get a warning that i should not "make dist"
which is a warning that i did not need; i am the wrong person to be
building a copy of anything to be distributed....

i promise that if i need the documentation, i will find it myself or
install the whole works so that i can read it....

help?
carol
(already way too openly jaded...)