Chapter 1. Introduction

The DocBook-utils are a collection of various utilites to convert and analyse SGML documents in general and DocBook files in particular. They are developped by many authors and released under GPL licence.

DocBook is a SGML-based or XML-based standard for writing technical documentation defined by the DocBook Technical Committee of the OASIS consortium.

The DocBook-utils try to be as general as possible, and therefore it is possible to use them with other SGML formats than DocBook, like TEI or HTML. But each time there was an opportunity to make them biased to DocBook to ease the life of DocBook users, this opportunity has been given a higher priority than generality considerations. This is why this package is not called "SGML-utils".

The DocBook-utils are independant of any existing distribution of SGML parsers and of DocBook resources. However, they conform with the new draft on SGML and DocBook standardization being discussed at Linux Standard Base project.

So far, the DocBook-utils only consist of:

• jw, a script used to convert from DocBook or other SGML formats into "classical" file formats like HTML, man, info, RTF...

• sgmldiff, a script used to compare the markup of a SGML file with its translation into another language.

but we would like to see them accomplish other tasks in the future:

• Conversion from "legacy" formats like LinuxDoc, man, info, HTML or PDF into DocBook.

• Refined analysis of DocBook files like a "sgmlgrep" program that would allow context-sensitive searchs.

• Support for XML.

If you want to help or keep informed of the latest developments, please subscribe to the "docbook-utils@bazar.conectiva.com.br" mailing list. This list has been set up to allow collaborative development of these tools.