Write a technical documentation, I have encountered anyone. Many people use MS Word, which is undeniable that Word is really very powerful, but there are some shortcomings in Word unable to avoid: 1) When writing a document, I have to take into account the format of the document, this is a very headache, at least for me Forward. It is often the end that REVIEW has to be a few times, just to unify format, even if you use templates, you can't avoid this problem. 2) Unable to perform valid version control, because Word saved is a binary format, which cannot use the CVS version control function, which can only be manually merged, so it is easy to make mistakes. Although Word can now be saved into XML, look at the saved file will find that format and content are mixed together, simply can't see it. Moreover, when the version is controlled, we pay attention to the content, but now you have to deal with a lot of format information, at least I am not interested in this top. 3) Portability issues, after all, Word can only run on the Windows platform, even if you can save it as XML or HTML, how do you edit and print on other platforms? 4) The company has to consider the serious topic of intellectual property.
Speaking here, many people may naturally think of XML XSLT open source code. DocBook is based on XSLT development of ideological development, which can solve all of the above problems.
So what is Docbook? Docbook is a collection of standards and tools. The standards include XML, DTD, XSL, XSL-FO, and Docbook DTD (core of Docbook), tools include Xslt Processor and XSL-FO Processor. These standards and tools make up DOCBOOK-based distribution systems. The Docbook is originally developed to write and publish technical documents. O'Reily is one of the initiators, but it can also be used for other types of documents because the structure it defines in line with most modern books.
Docbook's core is Docbook DTD, which is maintained by the DocBook team of Oasis. This standard has been detailed for the structure of the document, such as books (Book elements), a title, a number of paragraphs (PARA), and a number of chapters, and so on. These are all in line with the publication format of conventional books.
Write a document using DOCBook, actually the process of editing the XML file based on the DocBook DTD. All content is encapsulated with a label. Docbook provides a detailed definition, almost anything can find the corresponding label according to its use. In the process of editing the document, the author only needs to care about the content, it will not involve the typographic problem.
To publish a DocBook document, you must use XSLT. The XSLT used for Docbook is not the core of Docbook, and anyone can write its own XSLT. Of course, you don't have to write yourself (unless you are interested), some people have done this work, you can find the Docbook style developed by Norman Walsh in SourceForge, when writing this article, the latest version is 1.67.2 .
If you finally publish a DocBook document, you need to use tools for Xslt Processor and XSL-FO Processor, which is available in Nature, like Xsltproc, Xalan, FOP, and PassiveTex. These tools are actually unrelated to DocBook. So don't have to waste time to find DOCBOOK online, just find tools implemented by standard, you can use the DocBook documentation. In general, DocBook's release process is: 1) Write an XML document; 2) Convert XML documents to HTML documents, or XSL-FO documentation using XSLT Processor; Convert to PDF or PS files. Therefore, DOCBOOK has the following advantages: 1) Content and format separation; 2) Content height structure; 3) The platform is independent; 4) The release process can be automated; 5) Easy to version control; 6) Can generate a variety of forms of documents.
Docbook's shortcomings are not Wysiwyg. When editing is not as intuitive, directly editing XML files is still a more cumbersome thing. But this problem is not serious, using a dedicated XML editor to make a lot of work, such as Emacs, support editing of the DocBook document. As for the effect, the use of tools to generate the final document is very fast. What is the shortcoming of this point relative to its advantages? Reference: DocbookDocbook Publishing Model installation configuration Docbook tool making Docbook documentation
