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DocBook is a DTD maintained by the DocBook Technical Committee
of OASIS. It is particularly
well suited to books and papers about
computer hardware and software (though it is
by no means limited to these
applications).
Because it is a large and robust DTD, and
because its main structures correspond to the
general notion of what constitutes a
“book,” DocBook has been adopted
by a large and growing community of authors
writing books of all kinds. DocBook is
supported “out of the box” by a
number of commercial tools, and there is
rapidly expanding support for it in a number
of free software environments. These features
have combined to make DocBook a generally
easy to understand, widely useful, and very
popular DTD. Dozens of organizations are
using DocBook for millions of pages of
documentation, in various print and online
formats, worldwide.
The DocBook Technical Committee
maintains both SGML and XML versions of the
DocBook DTD. To the extent that it is
practical, these DTDs are identical. There
is no intentional difference between the
DTDs, they are supposed to accept the same
set of documents.
DocBook has been under development since
1991.
The DocBook DTD was originally
designed and implemented by HaL Computer
Systems and O'Reilly & Associates
around 1991. It was developed primarily
for the purpose of holding the results of
troff conversion of UNIX
documentation, so that the files could be
interchanged. Its design appears to have
been based partly on input from SGML
interchange projects being conducted by
the UNIX International and Open Software
Foundation consortia.
When DocBook V1.1 was published, its
revision and maintenance began being
discussed in earnest in the Davenport
Group, a forum created by O'Reilly for
computer documentation producers. V1.2
was influenced strongly by Novell and
Digital.
In 1994, the Davenport Group became an
officially chartered entity responsible
for DocBook's maintenance; DocBook V1.2.2
was published simultaneously. The
founding sponsors of this incarnation of
Davenport included the following:
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Jon Bosak, Novell
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Dale Dougherty, O'Reilly &
Associates
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Ralph Ferris, Fujitsu OSSI
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Dave Hollander,
Hewlett-Packard
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Eve Maler, Digital Equipment
Corporation
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Murray Maloney, SCO
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Conleth O'Connell, HaL Computer
Systems
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Nancy Paisner, Hitachi Computer
Products
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Mike Rogers, SunSoft
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Jean Tappan, Unisys
Under the auspices of the Davenport
Group, the DocBook DTD began to take on a
larger scope: It was now being used by a
much wider audience, and for new
purposes, such as direct authoring with
SGML-aware tools and publishing directly
to paper. As the largest users of
DocBook, Novell and Sun tended to have
heavy influence on the design.
In order to help users manage change,
the new Davenport charter established the
following rules for DocBook releases:
-
Minor versions (“point
releases,” such as V2.2)
could add to the markup model, but
could not change it in a
backwards-incompatible way. For
example, a new kind of list element
could be added, but it would not be
acceptable for the existing
itemized-list model to start
requiring two list items inside it
instead of only one. Thus, any
document conforming to version
n.0 would also
conform to
n.m.
-
Major versions (such as V3.0)
could both add to the markup model
and make backwards-incompatible
changes. However, the changes had
to have been announced in the previous
major release.
-
Major-version introductions must
be separated by at least a
year.
V3.0 was released in January 1997.
After that time, although DocBook's
audience continued to grow, many of the
stalwarts of the Davenport Group became
involved in the XML effort, and
development slowed dramatically. The idea
of creating an official XML-compliant
version of DocBook was discussed, but not
implemented.
The sponsors wanted to close out
Davenport in an orderly way, but ensure
that DocBook users would be supported
somehow. It was suggested that OASIS
become DocBook's new home. An OASIS
DocBook Technical Committee was formed in
July, 1998, with Eduardo Gutentag of Sun
as chair.
The DocBook Technical Committee of
OASIS is undertaking new DocBook
development, has published an
XML-compliant version of DocBook and
plans to develop an XML Schema for
DocBook.
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