Members Approve DocBook v4.5 as OASIS Standard

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

** Link to this press release at
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2006-10-18.php **


Members Approve DocBook v4.5 as OASIS Standard

HP, IBM, PTC, SiberLogic, Sun Microsystems, and Others Advance Preferred Markup
Vocabulary for Technical Documentation and Books

Boston, MA, USA; 18 October 2006 -- OASIS, the international standards
consortium, today announced that its members have approved DocBook version 4.5
as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of
ratification. Widely adopted by technical writers since its introduction in
1991, DocBook provides an XML markup vocabulary for authoring and exchange of
prose content, especially technical documentation.

"DocBook enables you to author and store documents in a presentation-neutral
form that captures the logical structure and semantics of the content,"
explained Norman Walsh of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS DocBook
Technical Committee. "With DocBook, you can transform and publish content in
HTML, PDF, RTF, and many other formats. There have been lots of improvements,
both large and small, since the last OASIS Standard version of DocBook, among
them: new inline elements for finer control over content, improvements in
internationalization and accessibility, support for HTML tables, more support
for mathematics, and more generally available metadata."

"DocBook is used by authors of many types of publications, but its strongest
proponents are found in the hardware and software documentation community,"
said Robin Cover, managing editor of Cover Pages. "Many of today's largest open
source projects--including the Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, Samba, and the Linux
Documentation Project--use DocBook as their standard documentation format. This
latest version is a testament to the marketplace's ongoing devotion to the
standard."

DocBook allows authors to concentrate on the organization and meaning of their
text without concern for how their final documents will appear. Presentation
issues are handled separately by style sheets. DocBook's modular organization
allows the document's metadata to be easily customized by the user. It defines
a large body of tags to accommodate a wide range of applications and
expectations.

"DocBook is a cornerstone of a group of OASIS Standards that focus on the
document. Its 'cousins' include DITA and the OpenDocument format (ISO 26300),"
noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "It's exciting to note how
many participants in the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee have been members of
our organization since it was founded in 1993 as SGML Open. We commend DocBook
developers for continuing to advance this important standard and broaden its
relevance to applications beyond hardware and software documentation."

Participation in the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee remains open to all;
suppliers, end-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to
advance the continued development and adoption of DocBook. OASIS hosts an open
mail list for public comment on the standard.


Support for DocBook

"SiberLogic has championed DocBook since its early days as the definitive XML
standard for techdoc content. It was a natural fit for SiberSafe, the
industry's first commercial CMS solution for XML authoring teams. We are
thrilled to have contributed to the latest release of this mature and versatile
XML standard," said Alex Povzner, CEO, SiberLogic, Inc.

"Sun is proud to participate on the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee
developing one of the world's most widely used open standards for technical
documentation. DocBook V4.5 fixes a few small bugs and raises more than 50
enhancements to the level of OASIS Standard," said Norman Walsh, XML standards
architect at Sun.


Additional information:

OASIS DocBook Technical Committee:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook


About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is
a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development,
convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the
OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to
promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces
open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization
efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in
1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards
include AVDL, BCM, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML
Registry, EDXL-DE, EML, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM,
WS-Notification, WS-Reliability, WSRF, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, XCBF, and XML
Catalogs. http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact
Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
+1.941.284.0403 (mobile)