• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

DocBook

DocBook is a way to store and work with product documentation. It is best suited for technical publications focused on software, but can be used in many situations. DocBook allows technical communicators to:

• Generate different forms of documentation.
• Profile one documentation base for multiple different products or targets.

I've done both types of work, starting from a single documentation code base and using a process very similar to software building.

Many of the technical writer's most common problems are solved using a more software-like approach to documentation:

• Single-copy problem. When multiple products share common elements, they should share common documentation sources too. A change that shows up in all products can prompt a single change in all associated documentation.
  All too often, a product range has separate word-processor sources for each product. A change across the product range requires hand-editing of each document source, with the inevitable errors that creep in.
• Logical organization. With large documentation sets, it's easier to split up documentation sources into logical modules, and use xinclude to pull them together the way that software uses linking. This makes for more efficient editing.

Portable stylesheets

I'm extending the Roundtrip stylesheet for DocBook->OpenOffice, to use OO as a typesetter for DocBook publications.