About this Book

This is an alpha edition of this book. This version may contain glaring inconsistencies, missing sections, and other misfeatures indicative of a “work in progress”.

About the Authors

Norman Walsh is an XML Standards Engineer with Sun Microsystems, Inc..

Norm is an active participant in a number of standards efforts worldwide, including the XML Core, XSL and XML Schema Working Groups of the World Wide Web Consortium, the OASIS XSLT Conformance and RELAX NG Committees, the OASIS Entity Resolution Committee for which he is the editor, and the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee, which he chairs.

Leonard Muellner has been implementing and supporting the production of O'Reilly books marked up in DocBook since 1994.

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The bird on the cover of DocBook: The Definitive Guide is a wood duck. Often considered one of the most beautiful ducks in North America, the male wood duck has a metallic purple and green head with white streaks extending from its bill around the eyes and down to its blue and green, gold-flecked wings. It has a white neck, chestnut-colored chest, a white or red bill, and yellow-orange legs and feet. Females have more brown, gray, and subdued hues.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced by Kathleen Wilson using QuarkXPress 3.32 and Adobe's ITC Garamond font. The inside layout was designed by Alicia Cech, based on a series design by Nancy Priest. The text was formatted from SGML into FrameMaker 5.5 with Jade, using a DSSSL conversion stylesheet written by Chris Maden. The interior fonts are ITC Garamond Light, Garamond Book, and ConstantWillison.

Whenever possible, our books use RepKover(TM), a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

The illustrations that appear in this book were produced by Robert Romano using Macromedia Freehand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5. David Futato was the production editor; Madeleine Newell guided the book through the early stages of production. Mark Nigara was the copyeditor for DocBook: The Definitive Guide. Claire LeBlanc was the production manager. Ellie Cutler was the proofreader; quality assurance was provided by Jeff Holcomb and Claire LeBlanc. This colophon was written by Nicole Arigo.