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. A specialized markup language using SGML is used to write the electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary. ... In general terms, documentation is any communicable material (such as text, video, audio, etc. ...

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. An excerpt of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Almost all substantial UNIX and Unix-like operating systems have extensive documentation available as an electronic manual, split into multiple sections called man pages (short for manual pages and based on the command used to display them). ...

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. 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Programming Perl is a classic OReilly book. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards. ...

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. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is a metalanguage in which one can define markup languages for documents. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data. ... die ... In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML, based on Murata Makotos RELAX and James Clarks TREX. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. ... XML Schema, published as a W3C Recommendation in May 2001, is an XML schema language. ...

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. The open source movement is an offshoot of the free software movement that advocates open-source software as an alternative label for free software, primarily on pragmatic rather than philosophical grounds. ... FreeBSD is a Unix-like free software operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through 386BSD and 4. ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) is a free desktop environment and development platform built with Trolltechs Qt toolkit. ... A gnome hiding behind a toadstool. ... Initially created for the raster graphics editor, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the GIMP Toolkit—abbreviated, and almost exclusively known, as GTK+—is one of the two most popular widget toolkits for the X Window System for creating graphical user interfaces. ... An application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system, library or application provides in order to allow requests for service to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. ... The Linux kernel is a Unix-like operating system kernel that was begun by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and subsequently developed with the assistance of developers worldwide. ... The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is an all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of Linux (and Linux-related) documentation and publishes the collection online. ...

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. Norman Walsh is an American software engineer and a self-described long-time markup geek with a history of involvement in work related to electronic publishing systems and SGML/XML applications. ... The eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a family of languages which allows one to describe how files encoded in the XML standard are to be formatted or transformed. ... Document Style Semantics and Specifications Language (DSSSL) is a language for specifying stylesheets for SGML documents, based on a subset of the Scheme programming language. ... An excerpt of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ... XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO, is an XML markup language for document formatting. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated to RTF) is a document file format that has been continually developed by Microsoft since 1987 for cross-platform document interchange. ... Almost all substantial UNIX and Unix-like operating systems have extensive documentation available as an electronic manual, split into multiple sections called man pages (short for manual pages and based on the command used to display them). ...

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. GNU logo (similar in appearance to a gnu) The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ...

DocBook 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 and allows users to quickly add elements and automatically validate XML documents as they create them. There are also WYSIWYG tools like XMLmind that provide users with a formatted view of a DocBook document during editing. This article is about the text editor. ... ÁWYSIWYG (pronounced //), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product. ...

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 (October 1999). DocBook: The Definitive Guide, 1st edition, O'Reilly Associates. ISBN 1-56592-580-7.
• Bob Stayton (2005). DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide, 3rd edition, Sagehill Enterprises. ISBN 0974152129.
• Joe Brockmeier (2001). DocBook Publishing - A Better Way to Create Professional Documents. Prima Tech's Linux Series. ISBN 0-7615-3331-1.

See also

• OpenDocument
• List of document markup languages
• Comparison of document markup languages

The OpenDocument format (ODF), short for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, is an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations. ... The following is a list of document markup languages. ... The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of document markup languages. ...

External links

• DocBook Project - Sourceforge project maintaining the DocBook XSL and DSSSL stylesheets
• DocBook Repository at OASIS- Official home of DocBook schema/DTD
• DocBook validator, XML → HTML/PDF transformer.
• Free DocBook Environment for Windows
• DocBook to OpenDocument XSLT (docbook2odf)- DocBook XSLT stylesheets and utils to OpenDocument transformation.
• EServer TC Library: DocBook
• DocBook editor

Tutorials and references

• DocBook.org - Official site for Norman Walsh's book DocBook: The Definitive Guide - Wiki - FAQ
• DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide - Full text of Bob Stayton's DocBook guide
• Docbook explained - Docbook, Pdf, Texinfo, Tex, which format to choose?
• Documention with DocBook on Windows