Last Updated on September 25, 2020
DocBook is a semantic markup language for writing structured documents using XML (or SGML). It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation. The language is fairly easy to learn; its strength derives from its flexibility.
DocBook enables you to author and store document content in a presentation-neutral form that captures the logical structure of the content. The XML files describe the document layout, paragraph division and other attributes. XML file structure may look familiar to HTML code. XML tends to be an improvement over the older HTML specification and can be used to produce complete web pages and other markup documents.
DocBook is an open source standard and used by some major projects. DocBook is an OASIS standard and the format in which many open source projects store their documentation.
DocBook is more than 17 years old. It began in 1991 as a joint project of HaL Computer Systems and O’Reilly & Associates (as O’Reilly Media, Inc. was then called).
Ways to Learn
DocBook: The Definitive Guide
By Norman Walsh (HTML; 552 pages)
DocBook 5: The Definitive Guide is the complete, official documentation of DocBook 5.0. The book teaches you all of the language’s features including its content model.
- Learn how to write DocBook XML documents;
- Understand DocBook 5.0’s elements and attributes, and how they fit together;
- Determine whether your documents conform to the DocBook schema;
Learn about options for publishing DocBook to various output formats - Customize the DocBook schema to meet your needs;
- Get additional information about DocBook editing and processing.
The book is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Good and Bad about DocBook
| Advantages | Disadvantages | ||
|---|---|---|---|
 | Hgh level of portability |  | Tags and their requirements can be complex to a new user |
| High and flexible level of scalability | | XML is not particularly readable |
| Validate texts using a schema | | XSLT skills needed to create your own stylesheets |
| Good range of formats supported including HTML, PDF, man pages, EPUB, Mobi, Text, and webhelp | | Not well suited for short documents or one-off documents |
| Easy validation in compatible (XML) editors | | Not suited for highly formatted documents |
Useful Software
pandoc – converts files from one markup format into another.
Lyx – a popular document processor which offers a source code viewer for DocBook, together with SGML-tools support (DocBook DTDs).