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  1. DocBook for eLearning Scott Hudson 21-Oct-2009
  2. DocBook Publishers Schema Version 1.0 available for public review! Scott Hudson 06-Jul-2009
  3. DITA's New Keys and the 80/20 Rule Jim Earley 10-May-2009
  4. Content Management Strategies/DITA North America Conference Review Jim Earley 08-May-2009
  5. DITA and Dynamic Content Delivery Eric Severson 08-May-2009

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DocBook for eLearning

Scott Hudson - Wednesday, October 21, 2009

I'm very happy to announce the formation of the DocBook Subcommittee for eLearning! The DocBook Technical Committee approved the subcommittee and following charter on 21 Oct 2009:

Background

For more than a decade, DocBook has provided a structured markup vocabulary for hardware and software documentation. DocBook is now widely used in both commercial and Open Source environments. DocBook has a very broad element set, and applies to much more than just technical documentation. The DocBook TC is engaged in evolving the suite of DocBook specifications. The community benefits from having a standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in which to write structured content. DocBook has been, and will continue to be, designed to satisfy this requirement.

The OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for eLearning is chartered to develop and maintain official variants of DocBook in support of the eLearning industry. Specifically, the subcommittee will focus on schema and stylesheet customizations to support:

  1. Develop and design a DocBook-based method for creating reusable learning objects, and the learning content types needed to support them. Some specifics of the design for learning content include:
    1. learning types, including assessments and exercises
    2. a content assembly for structuring, sequencing and managing the learning types as reusable learning objects
    3. linking and relationships between learning objects
    4. interactions
  2. Establish guidelines that promote best practices for applying DocBook markup to learning content

Scope of Work

This subcommittee will submit additional enhancements back to the full DocBook standard as appropriate. The scope of this DocBook subcommittee is eLearning content. Broadly, this includes online learning, instructor-led training and other related educational materials.

This effort will deliver on the following goals:

  • Build official DocBook variants, based against the DocBook v5.0 schemas.
  • Address issues and enhancement requests that have arisen from experience with real-world DocBook and eLearning implementations.
  • Add support for features specific to the eLearning industry.

We already have 5 members, who are very eager to get started! If you are an OASIS member and would like to participate, please let me know!

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DocBook Publishers Schema Version 1.0 available for public review!

Scott Hudson - Monday, July 06, 2009

Well, we finally got all the i's dotted and the t's crossed! The DocBook Publishers schema is available for public review. This is an effort I chaired to support the needs we've seen in the publishing industry.

Many publishers spend considerable amounts of time and money developing and maintaining their own custom schemas and output rendering. This standard tries to address the unique needs of publishers, while building upon a standards-based platform to reduce cost and ensure consistency. Key publishers involved in this effort have included: O'Reilly, John Wiley and Sons, and Penguin UK, so this was not developed in a vacuum either!

Here's the notice from OASIS:

The OASIS DocBook TC has recently [January 2009] approved the following specification as a Committee Draft and approved the package for public review:

The DocBook Publishers Schema Version 1.0

The public review starts today, 2 July 2009, and ends 31 August 2009. This is an open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of OASIS work. Please feel free to distribute this announcement within your organization and to other appropriate mail lists.

More non-normative information about the specification and the technical committee may be found at the public home page of the TC at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=docbook. Comments may be submitted to the TC by any person through the use of the OASIS TC Comment Facility which can be located via the button marked "Send A Comment" at the top of that page, or directly at: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=docbook .

Submitted comments (for this work as well as other works of that TC) are publicly archived and can be viewed at: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-comment/. All comments submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC members.

The specification document and related files are available here:

Editable Source:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.xml

PDF:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.pdf

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/publishers-1.0-spec-cd-01.html

Schema:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/docbook/rng/publishers/publishers.rnc

OASIS and the DocBook TC welcome your comments.

You can also take a look at all of our content samples on SourceForge here:
http://docbook.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/docbook/trunk/docbook/relaxng/publishers

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DocBook: A successful Open Source Project?

Scott Hudson - Wednesday, May 06, 2009
A few weeks ago, I found an interesting article on gauging the success of Open Source projects. Since I contribute to several open source and standards initiatives, I thought I'd put the article to the test with the most prominent of these: DocBook.

 

To give a little history, DocBook has been around since 1991. It is a very robust content model and considered the "de facto" standard for technical documentation. Given it's broad adoption, does that necessarily mean it is successful? Why? The article provides a 9-point checklist, so I'll address each of these in turn.

 

  1. A thriving community - DocBook has one of the most active user communities around. Don't believe me? Check out the docbook-apps mailing list and the docbook mailing list and by tuning into the DocBook irc channel. You can get expert help from around the world almost 24-7 and in multiple languages, too! Many of these are contributors to the DocBook project on sourceforge.net, and participation is welcomed and encouraged.
  2. Disruptive goals - Many would agree that DocBook provides much more control and semantics to what is currently available in Microsoft Word or other commercial documentation solutions. DocBook aims to be the preeminent solution for creating books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
  3. A benevolent dictator - Two words: Norm Walsh. Norm is very well known in the XML community. He is not afraid to speak his mind concerning requested features, but is very open to new ideas and contributions.
  4. Transparency - DocBook is maintained by a technical committee at OASIS. All activities and correspondence is archived and available for public review and input. The DocBook mailing lists are also archived by several different services. You can't get much more transparent than that.
  5. Civility - This has never been an issue in the DocBook community. All participants are very professional, and willing to help the newbies as well as experts with any DocBook-related issues.
  6. Documentation - Not only is the DocBook specification publicly available, but Norm Walsh has open-sourced his book, "DocBook: The Definitive Guide" and Bob Stayton has open-sourced his book, "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide". These are the best sources of documentation available for DocBook, but several parameter references as well as the DocBook wiki are also publicly available.
  7. Employed developers - While DocBook does not have any official paid developers, several of the contributors work full-time on DocBook and DocBook implementations.
  8. A clear license - The standard is freely available from OASIS as well as the docbook.org site. The specifications are covered under OASIS IPR Policy, where you can read all of the details.
  9. Commercial support - Last, but not least, DocBook is supported in many commercial products.
In consideration of these 9 items in the checklist, I would posit that DocBook is, indeed, a very successful open-source project and well worth considering for your documentation.

 

I'd also like to point out to the naysayers that DocBook is NOT dead! In fact, it is more active than ever! The latest version of the standard (v5.0) has been in development for the last several years and is expected to reach official OASIS standard status some time this year. The DocBook TC is also establishing subcommittees to address industry-specific needs.

 

The first of these is the DocBook Publishers subcommittee, which is addressing the needs of the publishing industry (as opposed to computer hardware and software documentation industry). The specification for an official Publishers schema was recently approved and will be available for public review shortly.

 If you have specific needs in publishing, documentation, or content management, we would be very pleased to assist you. Please contact us!

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