DocBook book

[Murray Stokely]

On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 11:07:06AM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> I have it, and I can't recommend it.  Despite the name, it's a
> reference, not a guide.  For an example of the kind of book I'm
> looking for, see http://www.alltel.net/~kollar/utp/.  That's about
> troff, not DocBook, but it's a well written book.  I don't think
> anything similar is available for DocBook.

I can recommend DocBook TDG strongly if you are trying to author
something in DocBook for the first time.

The whole point of SGML is that it is a totally different paradigm
from something like troff.  Authors aren't supposed to have to worry
abou the complications of presentation.  This book teaches you the
tags that have been defined to describe technical content.  It is
another problem domain (usually dealt with by a separate person) to
write an XML application to query that document for semantic
information, process the SGML document and turn it into another output
format, process the SGML document and create a audio rendering, etc..

The book you reference has chapters on learning vi, Unix fundamentals,
and all kinds of typesetting information, all of which is completely
irrellevant in the SGML/XML world.  I'm sure it's a great book on
troff, but it's not a fair comparison.

If Warner would like to know more about the process of rendering
DocBook SGML files into different output formats, then the wrong
question was asked and a different book would have been recommended.

	- Murray