DocBook for Subcommittee Publishers: Call of Pain Points

["Keith Fahlgren" <abdelazer@gmail.com>]

Hello,

The OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers[1] has recently agreed
on a (provisional) minimal set of DocBook elements required for
Publishers[2] and is now seeking input from Publishers to identify
general publishing needs not currently met by DocBook. If you're a
Publisher feeling overly constrained or underserved by DocBook, this
is your chance to have your voice heard! We're interested in ways in
which DocBook isn't properly suiting your semantic needs, metadata
requirements, or compilation demands (or anything else I haven't
covered).

Please feel free to contact me directly either at this email or
keith@oreilly.com to share your thoughts.

Thanks,
Keith

Background

For more than a decade, DocBook has provided a structured markup
vocabulary for hardware and software documentation. DocBook is now
widely used in both commercial and Open Source environments. DocBook
has a very broad element set, and applies to much more than just
technical documentation. The DocBook TC is engaged in evolving the
suite of DocBook specifications. The community benefits from having a
standard, open, interchangeable vocabulary in which to write
structured content. DocBook has been, and will continue to be,
designed to satisfy this requirement.

The OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers is chartered to develop
and maintain official variants of DocBook in support of the publishing
industry. Specifically, the subcommittee will focus on schema and
stylesheet customizations to support: periodicals as regularly
published technical notes or journals, book publishing (such as
business, legal, medical, and other non-technical domains),
educational textbooks and other document types as appropriate for this
industry.


1. http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/Publishers
2. http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/PublishersMinimalElements