Chapter 1. Getting Started with DocBook
This chapter provides an overview of DocBook, starting with its history. It includes a description of DocBook V5.0 and the changes from DocBook V4.x to V5.0.
A Short DocBook History
DocBook is more than 15 years old. It began in 1991 as a joint project of HaL Computer Systems and O’Reilly & Associates (as O’Reilly Media, Inc. was then called). Its popularity grew, and eventually it spawned its own maintenance organization, the Davenport Group. In mid-1998, maintenance moved to a Technical Committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
DocBook’s roots are in SGML, where it was defined with a Document Type Definition, or DTD. DocBook was released as both an SGML and an XML vocabulary starting with V4.1. The V4.x versions of DocBook, like the versions that came before them, were also defined with a DTD. Starting with DocBook V5.0, DocBook is exclusively an XML vocabulary defined with RELAX NG and Schematron.
The HaL and O’Reilly Era
The DocBook DTD was originally designed and implemented by HaL Computer Systems and O’Reilly & Associates around 1991. It was developed primarily to facilitate the exchange of UNIX documentation originally marked up in troff. Its design appears to have been based partly on input from SGML interchange projects conducted by the Unix International and Open Software Foundation consortia.
When DocBook V1.1 was published, discussion about its revision and maintenance began in earnest ...
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