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Understanding, Using, and Maintaining DocBook

Contents:
Quick Start
Interchanging DocBook Documents
Using New Releases of DocBook
Using DocBook with Specific Tools
DocBook Architecture
DocBook Entities

This chapter describes how to understand and use the files that make up the DocBook distribution. Parts of this discussion are relatively technical. If you are unfamiliar with reading and understanding DTD constructs, you may need to refer to other SGML resources for help.

2.1 Quick Start

To use DocBook ``out of the box,'' do the following:

1. Point your application to a valid series of mappings between the formal public identifiers used in DocBook and the system files corresponding to the DocBook modules. (You can use the docbook.cat catalog file, provided with the DocBook distribution, for this purpose; you may need to edit this file to make it point to accurate file locations on your system.)

2. Use a DOCTYPE declaration in your SGML documents as follows, providing your top-level element name as the document type name:

   <!DOCTYPE element-name PUBLIC "-//Davenport//DTD DocBook V2.4.1//EN">
   <element-name>
   .
   .
   .
   </element-name>
   

   For example (assuming no need for an internal declaration subset):

   <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//Davenport//DTD DocBook V2.4.1//EN">
   <book>
   .
   .
   .
   </book>
   

Before validating or processing any documents, you may need to prepare or compile DocBook in some fashion for use with your software.

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