Attention all DocBook fans!SourceForge is accepting nominations for its annual Community Choice Awards, so this is a great opportunity to Vote DocBook!
Nominations are open until May 29th. Please vote for DocBook in the Best Project for the Enterprise category. If you want to do the same, click here!
Get the word out using your social network and vote!
A few weeks ago, I found an interesting article on gauging the success of Open Source projects. Since I contribute to several open source and standards initiatives, I thought I'd put the article to the test with the most prominent of these: DocBook.
To give a little history, DocBook has been around since 1991. It is a very robust content model and considered the "de facto" standard for technical documentation. Given it's broad adoption, does that necessarily mean it is successful? Why? The article provides a 9-point checklist, so I'll address each of these in turn.
A thriving community - DocBook has one of the most active user communities around. Don't believe me? Check out the docbook-apps mailing list and the docbook mailing list and by tuning into the DocBook irc channel. You can get expert help from around the world almost 24-7 and in multiple languages, too! Many of these are contributors to the DocBook project on sourceforge.net, and participation is welcomed and encouraged.
Disruptive goals - Many would agree that DocBook provides much more control and semantics to what is currently available in Microsoft Word or other commercial documentation solutions. DocBook aims to be the preeminent solution for creating books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
A benevolent dictator - Two words: Norm Walsh. Norm is very well known in the XML community. He is not afraid to speak his mind concerning requested features, but is very open to new ideas and contributions.
Transparency - DocBook is maintained by a technical committee at OASIS. All activities and correspondence is archived and available for public review and input. The DocBook mailing lists are also archived by several different services. You can't get much more transparent than that.
Civility - This has never been an issue in the DocBook community. All participants are very professional, and willing to help the newbies as well as experts with any DocBook-related issues.
Documentation - Not only is the DocBook specification publicly available, but Norm Walsh has open-sourced his book, "DocBook: The Definitive Guide" and Bob Stayton has open-sourced his book, "DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide". These are the best sources of documentation available for DocBook, but several parameter references as well as the DocBook wiki are also publicly available.
Employed developers - While DocBook does not have any official paid developers, several of the contributors work full-time on DocBook and DocBook implementations.
A clear license - The standard is freely available from OASIS as well as the docbook.org site. The specifications are covered under OASIS IPR Policy, where you can read all of the details.
Commercial support - Last, but not least, DocBook is supported in many commercial products.
In consideration of these 9 items in the checklist, I would posit that DocBook is, indeed, a very successful open-source project and well worth considering for your documentation.
I'd also like to point out to the naysayers that DocBook is NOT dead! In fact, it is more active than ever! The latest version of the standard (v5.0) has been in development for the last several years and is expected to reach official OASIS standard status some time this year. The DocBook TC is also establishing subcommittees to address industry-specific needs.
The first of these is the DocBook Publishers subcommittee, which is addressing the needs of the publishing industry (as opposed to computer hardware and software documentation industry). The specification for an official Publishers schema was recently approved and will be available for public review shortly.
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I was on the road last week and didn't have a chance to post the GREAT news!
At the DocBook TC meeting on November 7, 2007, DocBook V5.0 was approved as a Committee Draft! This draft was a result of several years of hard design work, especially by Norm Walsh, who created 9 Beta Releases and 7 Candidate Releases since October of 2005.
The most exciting feature, IMO, that this standard is based on RelaxNG rather than DTD. DTD and XSD are still supported/provided, but the canonical format is now RelaxNG (RNC). Vendors, start your engines and add support for RelaxNG validation! Actually, several vendors are already "ahead of the game" with RelaxNG support: oXygen XML Editor, XML Mind XXE, Editix, Emacs nXML, Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor. Conspicuously missing: PTC Arbortext Editor and XMetal. [NUDGE: C'mon big guys!]
The other exciting result of DocBook v5 and RelaxNG, is that it makes customization layers EXTREMELY easy to manage. The DocBook Subcommittee for Publishers proposed a new modularization of the RNC schemas for DocBook v5 to create Core DocBook and additional schema modules, which have now been incorporated into the v5 source. As a result, we've also been able to produce an initial draft of an official DocBook Publishers customization very easily!
This is great news for the entire DocBook TC and community!
Jirka Kosek has graciously provided an English translation of the Czech Standards Institute's comments on the Microsoft-created Office Open XML standard.
The English version is here: http://xmlguru.cz/2007/08/czech-ooxml-comments-in-english
I also thought it was interesting to visually see the size of this monster spec. See the photos here: http://xmlguru.cz/2007/07/czech-comments-ooxml
Personally, I'm glad Microsoft finally got around to providing the specs for their XML export from their products. I also despise the markup, but at least it's documented. I also thought it was a bit underhanded and deliberate to name it "Office Open XML" which is so incredibly similar to the Open Office product that uses the OASIS Open Document Format. They could have just named it MOM - Microsoft Office Markup language...
Thanks for the comments on the standard, Jirka!
Thanks to a post from Jeni Tennison, I found out about claimID and openID. I've created a claimID page here: http://claimid.com/shudson310. It's also cool that it sets up an hCard for you on the same page!
I ran across an interesting article in the February '07 issue of Popular Science about Curriki, a new website/organization set up by Scott McNealy to promote Open Source eLearning.
The site is: http://www.curriki.org
In March 2004, McNealy helped create the Global Education & Learning Community (GELC) to leverage open source to provide learning materials for everyone, anywhere. GELC was spun off in 2006 as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit now known as Curriki - the Global Education & Learning Community.
The content is in a Wiki format, but interestingly enough:
it can take a Texbook Wiki document and convert it to a DocBook XML format suitable as a portable eBook, or a PDF file suitable for printing. It can also package assets into portable learning objects in the form of IMS/SCORM compliant content packages. It includes tools for configuring the transformation of assets (Form to form, like XML to PDF or ODF) and packaging of assets (For specific LMSs, or with specific metadata).
We've been working to address eLearning content structure as part of the OASIS DITA Learning Content subcommittee. We will definitely need to make sure these two efforts are compatible!
