DocBook Demystification HOWTO

Eric Raymond

<esr at thyrsus.com>

Revision History
Revision v1.3	2004-02-27	Revised by: esr
Add pointers to two editors.
Revision v1.2	2003-02-17	Revised by: esr
Reorder to defer references to SGML until after it has been introduced.
Revision v1.1	2002-10-01	Revised by: esr
Correct inadvertent misrepresentation of FSF's position. Added pointer to the DocBook FAQ.
Revision v1.0	2002-09-20	Revised 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.

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. Who are the projects and the players?

8. Migration tools

9. Editing tools

10. Hints and tricks

11. Related standards and practices

12. SGML and SGML-Tools

12.1. DocBook SGML
12.2. SGML tools
12.3. Why SGML DocBook is dead
12.4. SGML-Tools

13. References