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

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.