DocBook Demystification HOWTO

Eric Raymond


           
        

Revision History
Revision v1.62010-09-14Revised by: esr
Major update. dblatex actually works for PDF production. Describe asciidoc.
Revision v1.52006-10-13Revised by: esr
Major update. Getox seems to be dead, FOP a bit further along.
Revision v1.42004-10-28Revised by: esr
Minor update and license change.
Revision v1.32004-02-27Revised by: esr
Add pointers to two editors.
Revision v1.22003-02-17Revised by: esr
Reorder to defer references to SGML until after it has been introduced.
Revision v1.12002-10-01Revised by: esr
Correct inadvertent misrepresentation of FSF's position. Added pointer to the DocBook FAQ.
Revision v1.02002-09-20Revised by: esr
Initial version.

This HOWTO attempts to clear the fog and mystery surrounding the DocBook markup system and the tools that go with it. It is aimed at authors of technical documentation for open-source projects hosted on Linux, but should be useful for people composing other kinds on other Unixes as well.

Legal Notice
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Why care about DocBook at all?
3. Structural markup: a primer
4. Document Type Definitions
5. Other DTDs
6. The DocBook toolchain
7. asciidoc
8. Who are the projects and the players?
9. Migration tools
10. Editing tools
11. Hints and tricks
12. Related standards and practices
13. SGML and SGML-Tools
13.1. DocBook SGML
13.2. SGML tools
13.3. Why SGML DocBook is dead
13.4. SGML-Tools
14. References