DocBook: An Introduction for Technical Writers

With today's documentation, the push is to develop a variety of documents and a variety of outputs from a single source. On top of that, technical communicators must deal with a variety of content types -- not all of which are applicable to every user. So, how can technical communicators deal with these (and other) issues without the nightmare of maintaining multiple versions of the same document? One solution is DocBook. This report introduces DocBook XML and explains why it is a useful tool for technical writers.

DocBook Tools: An Overview

While DocBook is a powerful language for authoring and publishing documents, it can be difficult to configure the various elements of the DocBook toolchain. This problem is compounded by the problems that you will face when trying to decide which elements of the DocBook toolchain are right for your purposes and your budget. This report looks at the software that can be used to author and publish documentation with DocBook XML.