DocBook tools

You can ftp it the DocBook RPMs from ftp://sourceware.org/pub/docbook-tools/.

docbook-tools is free software. The parts by Cygnus and Mark Galassi are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Other parts are distributed according to their individual license agreements.

What is docbook-tools?

docbook-tools is a collection of all the free software tools you need to work on and format DocBook documents. RPMs are provided for those using RedHat Linux; the sourceware are all conveniently available from a single place if you're using some other OS.

For those curious about DocBook, it is an SGML (or XML) DTD for writing technical manuals that cover hardware or software. It provides a standardized set of tags for all the kinds of things you need when you're writing software documentation and such things.

Documentation

There is no separate documentation for the docbook-tools per se, but Mark Galassi has written a nice tutorial/introduction to writing in DocBook.

You may also want to look at the DocBook home page for further information.

Supported Platforms

Docbook-Tools for now is just a collection of RPMs. They have been run on Linux for Intel, Alpha and PowerPC processors, and they have also been run on Solaris on an ultraSparc. It will eventually evolve into something more portable.

How to get it

You can download the latest version from ftp://sourceware.org/pub/docbook-tools/.

You can also check out the very latest version via anonymous cvs. Here's how:

 cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/docbook-tools login
     (password is ``anoncvs'')
 cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@sourceware.org:/cvs/docbook-tools checkout docbook-tools

Once you have it checked out, you can update it with cvs update.

You can also view the cvs archive via cvsweb.

Mailing lists

For such a small piece of software, there are plenty of mailing lists available.

docbook-tools-announce is a low volume mailing list for docbook-tools release announcements
docbook-tools-discuss is a mailing list for asking questions, reporting bugs, etc.
docbook-tools-cvs is a mailing list where commit messages to the CVS repository are sent.

Mailing list:
Your e-mail address:
Digest version

We have web archives for two related mailing lists which are not hosted on sourceware.org: The DocBook mailing list and the DSSSList.

Authors and Credits

Docbook-Tools is maintained by Mark Galassi; the packaging was initially done by Mark Eichin; the individual programs (most of the work!) are written by the respective authors (James Clark, Norman Walsh, Sebastian Rahtz, others...). The AUTHORS file has more information.

If you have a problem, or have found a bug, please send a note to docbook-tools-discuss@sourceware.org.

This page last modified 2002-03-07 by jsm@cygnus.com.