DocBook 5 Toolchains (Rev. 1.90)

Free, Featured, Flexible

Ivan Zaporozhets

Second Edition (alpha)

Copyright © 2010-2012 Divine Dandelion℠ Online Publishing Service

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As it was announced early this year, the similar called article has been transformed into the book. Meet the Second Edition alpha.

This tutorial explains how to build complete toolchains suitable for modern DocBook XML 5.0+ projects. Following the tutorial and building the toolchains, you will build a pretty comfortable and efficient workspace as well. 

All toolchains described in the book are complete solutions characterized as “F3”: Free (all tools in the toolchains are either open-source software or free editions of proprietary products), Featured (RelaxNG-aware validation, tag completion, auto-building; XSLT 1.0 and 2.0, XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 support; and much more), and Flexible (various output formats with the same toolchain; easy upgrading; expandability; maintenance of multiple projects; etc). 

The book can also serve as an initial DocBook tutorial for very beginners.

Written for and tested under Ubuntu® Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS (may be run in a virtual machine), it can be adopted for other Linux® distributions and even for other operation systems including Windows® OS family. 

Revision 1.90

June 15, 2012

• Reformatted to book
• Changed the title and subtitle
• Deleted notes on Ubuntu® releases prior to Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS
• Expanded Abstract
• Changed Acknowledgements
• Added Preface
• Moved to Preface: the section called “Introduction”, the section called “Prerequisites”, the section called “Conventions”, and the section called “Feedback”
• Added Part II, “Installation Tasks” and Part IV, “Advanced Tasks”
• Changed several program listings
• Added Colophon
• Some minor corrections

Run VM on Your PC Easy - Rev. 0.95

RC1 of

Run VM on Your PC Easy:

Quick Practical Guide How to Run Virtual Machines in Several Easy Step

has been just published.

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Rev. history

Revision 0.95 - June 14, 2012

• Changed Release Info
• Added registered trademarks to Legal Notice
• Added an entry to the section called “Conventions”
• Some minor corrections
• Valid XHTML output

Complete Tool Chain for DocBook XML 5.0+ (Rev. 1.10)

Totally Free Solution Based On Emacs
Ivan Zaporozhets
First Edition, Revised, Updated, and Expanded
Copyright © 2010-2012 Divine DandelionSM Online Publishing Service

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Revision History

Revision 1.10 - June 14, 2012

• Added the edition entry.
• Updated Release Info
• Added trademarks to Legal Notice
• Added an entry to the section called “Conventions”
• Added and updated DocBook tools information
• Corrected several program listings
• Added bibliodivs and an entry to Bibliography
• Some minor corrections

Run VM on Your PC Easy - Rev. 0.20

Beta 2 of

Run VM on Your PC Easy:

Quick Practical Guide How to Run Virtual Machines in Several Easy Step

has been just published.

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Rev. history

• Added the edition entry
• Changed Release Info
• Separated source files: Legal Notice, Revision
• History, Abstract, and the section called “Overview”
• Expanded Legal Notice, Abstract, and Acknowledgements
• Added entries to the section called “Abbreviations” and the section called “Conventions”
• Added the section called “Overview” to the section called “VirtualBox”
• Added the section called “Overview” to the section called “Installing VirtualBox”
• Added the section called “On Mac OS X” to the section called “Installing VirtualBox”
• Added the section called “On Solaris” to the section called “Installing VirtualBox”
• Added the section called “Extension Packs” to the section called “Installing VirtualBox”
• Added Appendix C, The DejaVu Fonts License
• Some minor corrections
• Valid XHTML 1.1 output (chunked)
• PDF: Embedded DejaVu fonts and the draft watermark image

Please feel free to comment.

Complete Tool Chain for DocBook XML 5.0+ (Rev. 1.02)

Totally Free Solution Based On Emacs
Ivan Zaporozhets
First Edition, Updated
Copyright © 2010-2012 Divine DandelionSM Online Publishing Service

Updated version reflects the latest software changes: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, DocBook V5.1b7, DocBook XSLT Stylesheets 1.77.0, etc.

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 Revision History

Revision 1.02 - June 2, 2012

• Validated against DocBook 5.1
• Tested under Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS Desktop Edition
• Separated files: Legal Notice, Revision History, Abstract
• Added 2012 year entry in the copyright element
• Updated Release Info
• Expanded Legal Notice and Acknowledgements
• SM
• Changed link to the Blowball
• Online Reading Service web site
• Expanded the section called “Introduction”
• Added the section called “Prerequisites”
• Updated Software Versions
• Corrected some tasks, procedures, and steps
• Corrected several program listings
• Added Appendix B, DocBook on a Virtual Machine
• Added Appendix E, The DejaVu Fonts License
• Some minor corrections
• PDF: Embedded DejaVu fonts

Run VM on Your PC Easy - Rev. 0.10

Beta 1 of

Run VM on Your PC Easy:

Quick Practical Guide How to Run Virtual Machines in Several Easy Step

has been just published.

Project's Home

Read Online

Rev. history

• Changed Release Info
• Expanded Print History
• Added the section called “Get ISO Image”
• Added the section called “On Linux”
• Added entries to the section called “Abbreviations” and the section called “Conventions”
• Expanded procedures for Ubuntu Server Installation Task and Ubuntu Installation Task
• Added several substeps to some other procedures
• Added entries to the section called “Abbreviations” and the section called “Conventions”
• Upgraded Appendix B, The DocBook XSL Stylesheets Copyright Notice
• Some minor corrections

Please feel free to comment.

Run VM on Your PC Easy - Rev. 0.01

The first public revision of the article announced early this year - Run VM on Your PC Easy: Quick Practical Guide How to Run Virtual Machines in Several Easy Steps - is available.

Although a primary target audience of this article is very specific - readers of my other books and articles suggested to install VM as preparation for well-defined and predictable workspace - the article may certainly be interesting and useful under much wider range of users and circumstances (Ivan Zaporozhets, article's author).

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 Read Online

Please feel free to comment.

Service Logo

I have just provide the new logo for Divine Dandelion℠Online Publishing Service (designed with Inkscape).

P. S. Thanks a lot for the invitation to join this blog authors.

Run VM on Your PC Easy

We have just started the new Run VM on Your PC Easy project - a quick practical guide how to run Virtual Machines in several easy steps.

What's New in 2012?

Just a few words about our plans. We are going to publish in the next year the following documents (at least):

• Several Easy Practical Steps to Run Virtual Machines on Your PC (article, working title);
• Free Complete TooolKit for DocBook XML V5.0+ (book, working title).

Happy New Year!

Online Reading Room

Blowball℠ Online Reading Service has been created by PteroWare™ Group to provide a reading room with books, articles, and other documents issued by Divine Dandelion℠ Online Publishing Service.

The service is also available at blowball.uni.me.

Complete Tool Chain for DocBook XML 5.0+

Totally Free Solution Based On Emacs
Ivan Zaporozhets
First Edition
Copyright © 2010-2011 Divine DandelionSM Online Publishing Service


This tutorial explains how to build the complete tool chain suitable for modern DocBook XML 5.0+ projects and providing such brilliant features as RelaxNG-aware validation, completion, modularity, auto-building, etc.


Project's Home
Read Online


DocBook began in 1991. 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.

During that long DTD Era, many solutions were mentioned to make authoring easy and authors lucky. DTD-aware editors interactively validate documents as you edit them and assist in inserting valid elements, attributes, and values at a certain context.

Starting with DocBook V5.0 released on November 1, 2009, DocBook is exclusively an XML vocabulary defined with RELAX NG and Schematron. This is a slight problem because very few XML editors support them. Of course, using your habitual editor, you still can validate your DocBook V5.0+ documents with standalone validators, but it requires an extra tool in your tool chain, an extra step in your development process, and - what is more important - you can't use validation and completion anymore while you edit documents. It makes authoring uncomfortable and inefficient.

Most of RELAX NG supporting editors are commercial or restricted in some ways products. Probably there is only one free editor, old good Emacs (with nXML mode), providing both real-time RELAX NG validation and completion. In addition, you can use Emacs as an working environment to manage your project files, transform documents to various intermediate and output formats with external tools, etc. - i.e. to perform the full development process. Emacs, however, has a reputation for being extremely complicated.

All these prevent DocBook V5.0 transition or, at least, stick authors with DTD validation, that isn’t very valuable since the DTD version doesn’t enforce many DocBook constraints. Some publications attract our attention to Emacs mainly as to a very powerful XML editor that offers guided editing and validation of XML documents; others describe an interface to the make utility as well - although not for exclusive performing DocBook publishing. DocBook community still needs a simple and clear explanation of how to build from scratch an efficient tool chain based on Emacs for full processing DocBook V5.0+ documents.

Introduction

Divine Dandelion℠ is a service mark for Divine Dandelion℠ Online Publishing Service provided by PteroWare™ Group. 

Divine Dandelion℠ Online Publishing Service focuses mostly on publishing free books, articles, and other documents authorized with DocBook XML V5.0 or later.