Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems, Inc. <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>
DocBook is general purpose [XML] and [SGML] document type particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
The Version 4.3 release is a maintainance release. It introduces no backwards-incompatible changes.
This Working Draft is an editor's draft. It does not necessarily represent the consensus of the committee.
Please send comments on this specification to the <docbook@lists.oasis-open.org> list. To subscribe, send an email message to <docbook-request@lists.oasis-open.org> with the word "subscribe" as the body of the message.
The errata page for this specification is at https://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/docbook-errata.html.
Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003 The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards [OASIS]. All Rights Reserved.
DocBook is general purpose XML and SGML document type particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
The DocBook Technical Committee maintains the DocBook schema. DocBook is officially available as a Document Type Definition (DTD) for both XML and SGML. It is unofficially available in other forms as well.
The Version 4.2 release is a maintainance release. It introduces no backwards-incompatible changes. All valid DocBook 4.1 documents are also valid DocBook 4.2 documents.
The DocBook Technical Committee welcomes bug reports and requests for enhancement (RFEs) from the user community. The current list of outstanding requests is available through the SourceForge tracker interface. This is also the preferred mechanism for submitting new requests. Old RFEs, from a previous legacy tracking system, are archived for reference.
The key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional in this Working Draft are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119]. Note that for reasons of style, these words are not capitalized in this document.
The DocBook document type is distributed for XML and SGML from the DocBook site at OASIS.
There are no backwards-incompatible changes in this release.
Each of the changes made between DocBook V4.2b2 and DocBook XML V4.3b3 is summarized here. For complete details, consult the individual RFEs and the meeting minutes.
Added code inline with language attribute.
Fixed oversights that removed blockinfo and textobject from CALS tables.
RFE 615587: add xml:base to common attributes (2002 Nov)
RFE 616216: Allow sets to be recursive. (2002 Nov)
RFE 615473: Add floatstyle to figure, informalfigure, example, informalexample, equation, informalequation.
Fixed parameter entity declaration problems that resulted in duplicate attribute declarations for some table-related elements.
Added type attribute to indexterm and index.
There are no backwards-incompatible changes in this release.
Each of the changes made between DocBook V4.2 and DocBook XML V4.3b2 is summarized here. For complete details, consult the individual RFEs and the meeting minutes.
There was no public beta 1 release.
Allow HTML table models in addition to CALS or SOEx table models (2003 Apr)
Note: the editor has changed the content model of caption to support HTML tables with captions more directly.
Support task markup (2003 Jun).
Related to RFE 679316: add orgname to inlines (2003 Jul)
Added function attribute to keycap for improved semantics (2003 Jul)
RFE 705885: add namespace attribute to sgmltag (2003 May)
RFE 691762: add language attribute to verbatim environments (2003 May)
RFE 573419: add bidirectional text override (2003 Apr)
RFE 565716: support for URI element (2003 Apr)
RFE 660044: support continuation and startinglinenumber on verbatims (2003 Feb)
RFE 655526: support modifier in funcprototype (2003 Feb)
RFE 638456: support translators (2003 Feb)
RFE 582822: paramdef and varargs on funcprototype (2003 Feb)
RFE 473365: choice attribute for paramdef (2003 Feb)
RFE 570068: new values for pubwork (2003 Jan)
Added xrefstyle (2002 Dec)
This is a first beta release by the editor. It has no normative status and may contain bugs.
The following backwards-incompatible changes were announced in DocBook V4.0, the DocBook Technical Committee expects to incorporate them into DocBook V5.0.
Each of the changes proposed is summarized here. For complete details, consult the individual RFEs and the meeting minutes.
DocBook V5.0 will be primarily an XML DTD. This will require a wide range of changes. As a result, DocBook V5.0 will more closely resemble The XML version of DocBook V4.x than the SGML version.
Planned parameter entity reorganization may reduce some content models. The goal of this effort is to remove a large number of spurious elements that snuck into content models during the first parameter entity reorganization (circa DocBook 2.4). In practice the TC expects changes to have very little "real world" impact.
The contents attribute will be removed from bookinfo and setinfo.
The %indexdivcomponent.mix; parameter entity will be restricted. Numbered figures and other elements inappropriate for an index or setindex will be removed.
RFE 416415: The constant class will be removed from systemitem.
Tables will be restricted from full CALS Table Model to the OASIS Exchange model.
The DocBook Technical Committee expects to announce the following backwards-incompatible changes in DocBook V5.0, for eventual incorporation into DocBook V6.0.
Each of the changes proposed is summarized here. For complete details, consult the individual RFEs and the meeting minutes.
RFE 412476: The class attribute on productname will be #IMPLIED.
RFE 482810: The content model of msgtext is far too broad. It will be reduced to the same mixture as %example.mix;.
RFE 482811: The title element will be removed from %bibliocomponent.mix; (use citetitle instead).
RFE 482812: The content model of citetitle will be reduced from %para.char.mix; to %title.char.mix;.
RFE 482815: The synopsis element will be removed from %para.char.mix;.
RFE 482818: Simplify the content model of toc.
RFE 482819: The content models of the bibliography elements will be adjusted so that it is not possible to mix biblioset and bibliomset elements.
RFE 482922: The msgtext element will be constrained to occur only inside msgset. See also RFE 482817.
RFE 531851: Remove inline person name elements as proposed.
RFE 531855: Remove corpname as proposed.
The following individuals were members of the committee during the formulation of this Working Draft:
Jeff Beal
Steve Cogorno
Paul Grosso
Dick Hamilton
Nancy Harrison
Scott Hudson
Mark Johnson
Michael Smith
Norman Walsh (Chair, Editor)
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[SGML] JTC 1, SC 34. ISO 8879:1986 Information processing -- Text and office systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). 1986.
[XML] Tim Bray, Jean Paoli, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, and Eve Maler, editors. Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Second Edition. World Wide Web Consortium, 2000.
[RFC 2119] IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. S. Bradner. 1997.