SUMMARY: DocBook Version 2.4, a backwards-compatible revision of DocBook, has been released and is now available from the Davenport Group's Web site (accessible through http://www.ora.com/davenport/README or ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/README). * * * All DocBook users and watchers should take a look at this new version. Some of the major new markup capabilities are as follows: o New common attributes for simple effectivity control and revision flags ("change bars") o Many enhancements to the book hierarchy, including a more flexible book structure and the addition of a "simple section" element for flat-by-design information modules o Better support for encoding graphical user interface documentation and keyboarding instructions, including special markup for GUI text, menu "picks," and complex key combinations o Support for encoding graphic and code example "callouts" o Addition of useful attributes to existing elements, such as the "path" attribute on the Filename element o Selective expansion of some element content models that users found too restrictive o OMITTAG schemes were changed to allow some end-tags to be omissible (even though the default DocBook SGML declaration says OMITTAG NO) so that users who keyboard their markup can use DocBook as is for efficient markup insertion Maintainers and other DTD readers will be interested in the reorganization of the parameter entities used for managing inline-level element mixtures, and in the enhancements to the parameterization scheme for customizing the DTD. Updated maintenance and user's documentation is forthcoming. (We plan to overhaul and improve the DocBook documentation set for V3.0; if you have sample DocBook documents or document fragments that you would like to donate to the documentation or the Davenport archive, please contact one of the maintainers.) You can download the files related to DocBook V2.4 from the following locations: o ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/docbook/docbk24.tar.Z (requires tar and uncompress) o ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/docbook/docbk24.zip (requires pkunzip) Comments on DocBook are always welcome. You can send comments and questions to the Davenport list (davenport@online.ora.com), or directly to the maintainers of DocBook, Terry Allen (terry@ora.com) and Eve Maler (elm@arbortext.com). Thank you.