Learn about DocBook
DocBook is an XML format derived from an SGML format that is used for (surprise, surprise) documentation books. It was (I believe) originally developed by O'Reilly to ease the creation and formatting efforts for their technical documentation books. DocBook is an extremely rich, and therefore rather complicated, format. However, it's richness allows it to be effectively applied to many different documentation tasks. The fundamental insight of DocBook is that it separates the content of the document from its presentation. This means that you first edit the content of the document and then transform it into something presentable to an end user. Because these two steps are separate, the tasks of writing of a document and designing a document can be distributed to those with particular skill or knowledge suitable to the task.
Some DocBook Features
Because DocBook is an XML format, it can be easily transformed (using XSLT) into other formats, notably HTML and PDF.
- The appearance of the output can be controlled with various types of style sheets.
- People unskilled in design do not need to concern themselves with the presentation of the document, they only need to worry about its structure and content.
- Because XML is itself text, it integrates well with CVS and other version control software. This also makes it easy for programmers and users comfortable with text editors to change the document.
The transformation of a DocBook document into other formats can be integrated with the ANT build process.
Problems?
DocBook currently lacks a good ../DocBook_GUI_editor something that we require so that non-technical users require.