Preface to the DocBook V5.1 Edition

DocBook 5: The Definitive Guide as you see it on this site tracks the most current development release of DocBook, at the moment, that's DocBook V5.1b3.

The current O'Reilly edition covers DocBook V5.0, the OASIS Standard.

If you're using DocBook V5.0, you will find some things in this online text which are new or different from the OASIS Standard release.

1. Summary of Changes in DocBook V5.1

This section summarizes the changes made since DocBook V5.0.

FIXME: This needs to be updated

The largest change is the introduction of support for topic-based authoring through the addition of the topic element and the assembly structure. For more information about assemblies, see Chapter 6, DocBook Assemblies.

DocBook V5.1 also addresses the following requests for enhancement:

RFE 1679665 Add better support for modular documentation.
RFE 1722935 Add a proofreader value to the class attribute for othercredit.
RFE 1770787 Add givenname as an alternative for firstname.
RFE 1899655 Allow more elements to be the root of a DocBook document.
RFE 2100736 Allow constant in initializer.
RFE 2791288 Added several additional elements, including quote, to the ubiquitous inlines.
RFE 2820190 Add a topic element.
RFE 2821653 Remove the constraint that indexterm elements must not appear in footnotes.
RFE 2907124 Allow personal name components directly in bibliomset.
RFE 2907125 Allow all inlines in remark.
RFE 2907131 Allow simplesect in colophon.
RFE 2964576 Fix the bug that allowed table to appear inside entry.
RFE 3064674 Make sure abstract isn't lost during the DocBook 4-to-5 upgrade in db4-upgrade.xsl.
RFE 3150303 Broaden content model of contrib.
RFE 3171553 Allow dedication in article.
RFE 3174769 Added securitycontext and other to systemitem.
RFE 3199793 Allow XInclude to be used in set. Also allowed in more places. Tweaked XInclude pattern to allow foreign, namespace-qualified attributes in preparation for XInclude 1.1.
RFE 3227210 Fix HTML informaltable attributes.
RFE 3274136 Allow production to contain more than one rhs.
RFE 3287339 Support “istc as a class attribute value on biblioid.
RFE 3368279 Make content optional in components and sections.
RFE 3384939 Fix XLink support. Allow extended links and other link types.
RFE 3390036 Allow tag elements to nest.
RFE 3406169 Allow multiple procedure elements in task.
RFE 3500814 Added pgwide attribute to informalexample and informalequation.
RFE 3517981 Remove spurious, duplicate “other value from othercredit.
RFE 3530659 Allow admonitions in formal objects.
RFE 3531365 Allow navigation components at the beginnings of sections.
RFE 3540409 Added altgr and return values to the function attribute on keycap
RFE 3547943 Don't allow secondary without a primary in indexterm.
RFE 3571149 Allow article in set.

The following issues are also addressed:

Added accessibility attributes to CALS tables.
Added outputformat as a common effectivity attribute.
Fixed bug in Schematron assertions (several conditions were reversed).
Improve support for multimedia. Added autoplay and classid attributes to audiodata and videodata. Added multimediaparam, allowed in audioobject and videoobject.
Allow link in extendedlink. See backwards incompatible changes planned for DocBook V6.0; arc and locator will be removed.
Changed Schematron namespace to official ISO Schematron URI.

1.1. Backwards incompatible changes planned for DocBook V6.0

The following backwards incompatible changes are planned for DocBook V6.0:

The linking elements will be removed from the content model of biblioid.
The common linking attributes will be removed from indexterm.
The xml:id attribute will be made required on startofrange indexterms.
A Schematron constraint will be added to assert that for every startofrange indexterm there is exactly one endofrange indexterm that points to it.
The language attribute will be removed from address; use xml:lang instead.
The arc and locator elements will be dropped; instead link will be allowed in extendedlink.

2. About the formatting…

Starting with this edition of the guide, publication is being performed by the XSLT 2.0 stylesheets. Please report any formatting errors you notice.