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DocBook

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DocBook is a markup language for technical documentation, originally intended for authoring technical documents, related to computer hardware and software but which can be used for any other sort of documentation.

One of the principal benefits of DocBook is that it enables its users to create document content in a presentation-neutral form that captures the logical structure of the content; that content can then be published in a variety of formats, including HTML, PDF, man pages and HTML Help, without requiring users to make any changes to the source.

History

DocBook began in 1991 as a joint project of HaL Computer Systems and O'Reilly & Associates and eventually spawned its own maintenance organization (the Davenport Group) before moving in 1998 to the SGML Open consortium, which subsequently became OASIS. DocBook is currently maintained by the DocBook Technical Committee at OASIS.

DocBook is available in both SGML and XML forms, as a DTD. RELAX NG and W3C XML Schema forms of the XML version are available. Starting with DocBook 5, the RELAX NG version is the "normative" form from which the other formats are generated.

DocBook originally started as an SGML application, but an equivalent XML application was developed and has now replaced the SGML one for most uses. (The XML DTD started with version 4 of the SGML DTD and keeps the versioning from there.)

After initially being used primarily just among the key group of software companies who had representatives involved in its initial design, DocBook was eventually adopted by the open source community, where it has become a de facto standard used for creating documentation for many projects, including the FreeBSD, KDE, GNOME documentation, the GTK+ API references, the Linux kernel documentation, and the work of the Linux Documentation Project. DocBook use outside of the open source community also continues to grow. And a variety of commercial documentation-authoring tools are now shipped with some form of "off the shelf" support for DocBook.

Norman Walsh and the DocBook Project development team maintain the key application for producing output from DocBook source documents: A set of XSL stylesheets (as well as a legacy set of DSSSL stylesheets) that can generate high-quality HTML and print (FO/PDF) output, as well as output in other formats, including RTF, man pages and HTML Help.

Walsh is also the principal author of the book DocBook: The Definitive Guide, the official documentation of DocBook. This book is available online under the GFDL, and also as a print publication.

Because Docbook is XML, documents can be created and edited with any text editor, however many dedicated tools exist that simplify the process. Emacs in nXML mode comes with built-in Docbook schema information that allows users to quickly add elements or validate the document. There are WYSIWYG tools like XMLmind that allow you to view the Docbook document while writing.

Sample code

<book id="simple_book">
  <title>Very simple book</title>
  <chapter id="simplechapter">
    <title>Chapter 1</title>
    <para>Hello world!</para>
  </chapter>
</book>

References

  • Norman Walsh, Leonard Muellner (1999). DocBook: The Definitive Guide (1st edition ed.). O'Reilly Associates. ISBN 1-56592-580-7. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Bob Stayton (2005). DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide (3rd edition ed.). Sagehill Enterprises. ISBN 0974152129. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  • Joe Brockmeier (2001). DocBook Publishing - A Better Way to Create Professional Documents. Prima Tech's Linux Series. ISBN 0-7615-3331-1.

See also

Tutorials and references

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