DocBook

Draft

Definition

DocBook is a document standard popular for writing large documentation. It is also used in education.

An example

The following code are bits from FOSS Government and Policy Primer (docbook xml)

<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" [
]>
<book>
  title>Free/Open Source Software: Government Policy</title>
  <bookinfo>
    <publisher>
      <publishername>International Open Source Network</publishername>
    </publisher>
    <authorgroup>
      <author>
	<firstname>Kenneth</firstname>
	<surname>Wong</surname>
      </author>
    </authorgroup>
  </bookinfo>
  <preface>
    <title>FOREWORD</title>
    <para>Free software means software that respects the user's
    freedom. It means that users are free to run the programs as they
    wish, free to study and change the software (or hire others to do
    it for them), free to redistribute copies to others, and free to
    publish modified versions. As a consequence, users are free to
    share, and form communities to exercise effective control over the
    software they use. Free software may also be gratis, zero price,
    but this is not always the case.</para>
    [.....]
    <para>Richard M. Stallman</para>
  </preface>
  <preface>
    <title>PREFACE</title>
    <para>Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has grown incredibly in
    the past few years. Once considered a hobbyist's toy, FOSS has
    grown by leaps and bounds and is now used widely throughout the
    world, even in critical environments such as financial systems and
    network backbones.</para>

    [ ....]

  </preface>
  [ ....]
  <chapter>
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <blockquote>
      <attribution>David Wheeler</attribution>

      <para>Briefly, OSS/FS programs are programs whose licenses give
      users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study
      and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the
      original or modified program (without having to pay royalties to
      previous developers).

     <footnote>
	<para>Wheeler, David, "Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!" [home
	page online]; available from <ulink
	url="http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html">
             http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html</ulink>;
	Internet; accessed on November 7, 2003.</para>
	</footnote>
       </para>
    </blockquote>

    <para>The above quotation summarizes the guiding principles of
    FOSS - the freedom to use, understand, modify and distribute
    software. Seemingly a simple matter, today, these principles can
    have a profound impact on the economics and dynamics of the
    software industry.</para> [.... ]
  </chapter>
  [.....]
</book

Links

• DocBook (XML Version). Docbook is one of the most popular DTD's for writing books and papers (designed for informatics but used by other authors). There also is a simple version and a slidesdoctpye made by N.Walsh (fully compatible)
• http://docbook.sourceforge.net/ Docbook Open repository. Has several interesting stylesheets (including the known ones from N.Walsh)
• Writing Documentation Using DocBook Crash Course for using the KDE DocBook Tools. The tools themselves are at redhat.
• See e.g. XML Matters article by David Mertz for getting started with docbook.
• DocBook: The Definitive Guide ON-LINE O'Reilly book, nice on paper too.
• RefDB, RefDB is a reference database and bibliography tool for DocBook SGML/XML documents. It allows users to share databases over a network. Finally something like this is emerging :) 6/2001
• Profiling DocBook documents article by Jirka Kosek
• DocBook Wiki, founded by N. Walsh
• JReferences, is a tool to store and retrieve bibliographic references from a file or MySQL database. It reads BibTeXML, DocBook XML and RIS type references, and can output these and BibTex. A bibtex like alternative is also provided for DocBook. See BibTexML for details about the BibTexML standard and other tools