Norm Walsh has just released the 9th version of DocBookNG, code named: IPA

This release includes:

• Added citerefentry and citebiblioid to the list of elements that can appear in bibliography entries; removed titleabbrev.

• Reduced the content model of a bunch of inlines (command and others that were way to broad).

• Added link, xref, superscript, and subscript to the list of “ubiquitous” inlines.

• Added date to the list of publishing inlines.

• Added some inlines to computeroutput and userinput.

• Added some new exclusions (preventing admonitions and formal objects from being nested; removing some of the same from footnote).

• Removed the highlights element. A candidate for the role attribute if I ever saw one.

• Fixed bug that didn't allow sect1 in article when numbered sections are included.

Check it out!

BTW, Norm, I know always bug you about this, but can you please create a version of IPA for Simplified DocBook?

Michael Smith has announced the 1.68.0 release of the DocBook XSL stylesheets!

Here is the content of the announcement:

Version 1.68.0 of the DocBook XSL stylesheets is now available for download from the DocBook SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/

This release adds some significant new features, particularly for FO/PDF output.

As with all DocBook Project dot-0 releases, this release should be considered somewhat unstable and will likely be followed by a stable 1.68.1 release within the next two weeks (to correct problems reported with the dot-0 release).

Among the user-visible changes:

FO

• Moved footnote properties to attribute-sets.
• Added support for side floats, margin notes, and custom floats.
• Added new parameters body.start.indent and body.end.indent to the set.flow.properties template.
• Added support for xml:id
• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added index.entry.properties attribute-set to support customization of index entries.
• Added set.flow.properties template call to each fo:flow to support customizations entry point.
• Add support for @floatstyle in figure
• Moved hardcoded properties for index division titles to the index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• Added support for table-layout="auto" for XEP.
• Added index.div.title.properties attribute-set.
• $verbose parameter is now passed to most elements.
• Added refentry to toc in part, as it is permitted by the DocBook schema/ DTD.
• Added backmatter elements and article to toc in part, since they are permitted by the DocBook schema/DTD.
• Added mode="toc" for simplesect, since it is now permitted in the toc if simplesect.in.toc is set.
• Moved hard-coded properties to nongraphical.admonintion.properties and graphical.admonition.properties attribute sets.
• Added support for sidebar-width and float-type processing instructions in sidebar.
• For tables with HTML markup elements, added support for dbfo bgcolor PI, the attribute-sets named table.properties, informaltable.properties, table.table.properties, and table.cell.padding. Also added support for the templates named table.cell.properties and table.cell.block.properties so that tabstyles can be implemented. Also added support for tables containing only tr instead of tbody with tr.
• Added new paramater hyphenate.verbatim.characters which can specify characters after which a line break can occur in verbatim environments. This parameter can be used to extend the initial set of characters which contain only space and non-breakable space.
• Added itemizedlist.label.markup to enable selection of different bullet symbol. Also added several potential bullet characters, commented out by default.
• Enabled all id's in XEP output for external olinking.

HTML

• Added support for refdescriptor.
• Added support for multiple refnamedivs.
• Added support for xml:id
• refsynopsisdiv as a section for counting section levels

Images

• Added new SVG admonition graphics and navigation images.

Thanks Michael, Bob, Jirka, and everyone who contributed to this release!

Please give the stylesheets a try, and report any problems ASAP!

The OASIS DocBook TC approved the release of DocBook v4.4 as a Committee Draft this week!

The next step is to go for OASIS Standard, but I imagine that process will take longer than the Committee releasing DocBook v5.0...

You can see the specifics on Norm's blog: http://norman.walsh.name/2005/01/28/docbook44 , read the specification at: http://www.docbook.org/specs/cd-docbook-docbook-4.4.html and get the schemas at: http://www.docbook.org.

Enjoy!

Laurent Godard announced on the docbook-apps list about the freely-available ooo2dbk tool to transform OpenOffice.org documents to DocBook:

ooo2dbk is a tool allowing the transformation of OpenOffice.org documents to docbook. Based on Eric Bellot's work, it has been widely extended and allow enhanced export

http://indesko.com/sites/en/downloads/ooo2dbk___generating/view

Supporting XML docBook V4.3, it allows to generate both article and book documents A lot of features are available such as handling preface and appendix elements, metadatas as OOo user fields also

ooo2dbk is an independant script allowing then batch processing of OpenOffice.org documents

I contributed some code to the xmerge project a few years ago, but haven't had time to play with it for a while. It would be interesting to see where the filter is at now, and contrast it with the ooo2dbk tool...

Norm Walsh has published a new DocBook NG release: "Hard Cider"

DocBook NG is a preview of DocBook V5.0 using the RelaxNG schema.

Details are available at http://norman.walsh.name/2005/01/18/hardcider and the schema is available at http://docbook.org/docbook-ng/hardcider/index.html.

Norm has also created a DTD version so folks with DTD-based validating editors can try it out.

From Norm's post:

In addition to the DTD, there are a number user-visible changes in the “Hard Cider” release:

• Allow <colophon> at the end of an <article>, RFE #1070458.

• Allow navigation components (<index>, <glossary>, etc.) at the end of sections.

• Allow xml:space (with the value “preserve”) on verbatim environments.

• Make <revnumber> optional in <revision>, RFE #1055480.

• Added “protocol” to the list of class values on <systemitem>.

• Add <citation> and <citetitle> to <attribution>.

• Added <alt> and <annotation>.

• Added rowheader to <table> and <informaltable>.

• Made <title> required on <preface>. It always should have been.

• Added <contractsponsor>, <contractnum>, and <mediaobject> to the content of <info>.

• Allow text where a proper date used to be required (<pubdate> and friends).

• Allow endterm on <link>.

• Allow <refsection> as a “start” element.

• Allow <initializer> in <paramdef>.

Most of these changes make DocBook NG more compatible with DocBook V4.x.

The Simplified DocBook NG release is still at the "Bourbon" version. I mentioned to Norm at XML 2004 that I'd like to take a stab at updating it, so I'll try to get some spare time to go and sample some Cider!

I'm very excited with the direction of DocBook v5.0 since it's using RelaxNG. The hard part is getting Relax NG adopted and supported out there. The best editor I've used with Relax NG support is Oxygen. Most of the projects I'm on are also "standardized" on W3C schema, so getting Relax NG accepted is a tough battle...