187 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
187 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
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<HTML
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><HEAD
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><TITLE
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>Why care about DocBook at all?</TITLE
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><META
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NAME="GENERATOR"
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CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK
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REL="HOME"
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TITLE="DocBook Demystification HOWTO"
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HREF="index.html"><LINK
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REL="PREVIOUS"
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TITLE="Introduction"
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HREF="intro.html"><LINK
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REL="NEXT"
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TITLE="Structural markup: a primer"
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HREF="x69.html"></HEAD
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><BODY
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CLASS="sect1"
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BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
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TEXT="#000000"
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LINK="#0000FF"
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VLINK="#840084"
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ALINK="#0000FF"
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVHEADER"
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><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
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WIDTH="100%"
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BORDER="0"
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CELLPADDING="0"
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CELLSPACING="0"
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><TR
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><TH
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COLSPAN="3"
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ALIGN="center"
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>DocBook Demystification HOWTO</TH
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="intro.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="80%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="x69.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect1"
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><H1
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CLASS="sect1"
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><A
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NAME="AEN57"
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></A
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>2. Why care about DocBook at all?</H1
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><P
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>There are two possibilities that make DocBook really
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interesting. One is <EM
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>multi-mode rendering</EM
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> and the
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other is <EM
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>searchable documentation
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databases</EM
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>.</P
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><P
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>Multi-mode rendering is the easier, nearer-term possibility; it's
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the ability to write a document in a single master format that can be
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rendered in many different display modes (in particular, as both HTML
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for on-line viewing and as Postscript for high-quality printed
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output). This capability is pretty well implemented now.</P
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><P
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><EM
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>Searchable documentation databases</EM
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> is
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shorthand for the possibility that DocBook might help get us to a
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world in which all the documentation on your open-source operating
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system is one rich, searchable, cross-indexed and hyperlinked
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database (rather than being scattered across several different formats
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in multiple locations as it is now).</P
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><P
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>Ideally, whenever you install a software package on your machine
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it would register its DocBook documentation into your system's
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catalog. HTML, properly indexed and cross-linked to the HTML in the
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rest of your catalog, would be generated. The new package's
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documentation would then be available through your browser. All your
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documentation would be searchable through an interface resembling a
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good Web search engine.</P
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><P
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>HTML itself is not quite rich enough a format to get us to that
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world. To name just one lack, you can't explicitly declare index
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entries in HTML. DocBook <EM
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>does</EM
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> have the semantic
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richness to support structured documentation databases. Fundamentally
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that's why so many projects are adopting it.</P
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><P
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>DocBook has the vices that go with its virtues. Some people
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find it unpleasantly heavyweight, and too verbose to be really
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comfortable as a composition format. That's OK; as long as the markup
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tools they like (things like asciidoc or Perl POD or GNU Texinfo) can
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generate DocBook out their back ends, we can all still get what we
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want. It doesn't matter whether or not everybody writes in DocBook
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— as long as it becomes the common document interchange format
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that everyone uses, we'll still get unified searchable documentation
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databases.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Footer navigation table"
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WIDTH="100%"
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BORDER="0"
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CELLPADDING="0"
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CELLSPACING="0"
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="intro.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="index.html"
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ACCESSKEY="H"
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>Home</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="x69.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Introduction</TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Structural markup: a primer</TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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></DIV
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></BODY
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></HTML
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> |