Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: (ultra newbie) Docbook DTD vs. Docbook-Website DTD

[Bob Stayton <bobs at caldera dot com>]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 06:15:32PM -0500, Mazza, Glen R., ,CPMS wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I would like to put some of our HTML-destined documentation into official
> DocBook XML format.  I've also seen the DocBook Website pages (for example,
> at http://www.docbook.org/) and that looks pretty good for our needs.  
> 
> However, some confusion:  if I write the documentation so that the Website
> XSLT stylesheets can use them, will my XML documents then no longer be
> following the DocBook standard?  (i.e., can't be used for straight HTML
> processing using Xalan or FOP rendering into PDF using standard DocBook XSLT
> stylesheets?)  I'm unsure if DocBook-website works with DocBook documents,
> or basically requires its own format.

Website is an extension and subset of standard DocBook XML.
That is, it adds new elements (like 'webpage') and doesn't
support other elements (like book, chapter).
Likewise for the Website stylesheets: they are an extension
of the stock DocBook XSL stylesheets.

The basic unit of content in Website is a file whose
document root element is <webpage>.  Inside that element,
you can use various block-level DocBook elements to form
the content of the webpage.  You can use section elements,
lists, admonitions, programlistings, and such.
But not chapter, part, or book.

So it is true that such documents do not follow the DocBook
standard (because of the <webpage> element) and cannot be
processed with the stock DocBook XSL stylesheets.  But you
can cut and paste the content between the two.

If you have content already written in DocBook, you don't
have to convert it to Website.  You can create a Website
that has some pages of its own, and that has entries in
its list that point to the HTML for other documents outside
of Website.  

There is some doc on Website at:

http://www.sagehill.net/xml/docbookxsl/PreCustom.html#Website

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The SCO Group                               fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@sco.com