Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents
What This Document Is
What This Document Is Not
SGML - XML - HTML - DocBook

This document has been written by the author while he was starting his work with DocBook-XML without any precognitions. Because of this it is most likely far from being a perfect DocBook-XML document. This also means that it may be continued and extended in the future. Therefore any comments and contributions are welcome to .

What This Document Is

The following text gives a very brief overview regarding SGML, XML and DocBook and describes the very first steps that need to be carried out to get things running on a SuSE Linux system. The reader will learn which packages to install, how to configure the environment and what to read to get into more detail. Furthermore some DocBook elements are shown in a brief exemplary way to help the reader writing his first DocBook document.

The audience of this document are the hackers of the development department who are supposed to write "internal" documentation of more general interest in DocBook-XML in the future. It must be kept in mind that this kind of documentation does not require a very stylish layout (e.g. like books). Therefore only text production methods of fairly simple nature are mentioned. Producing full size printed documentation requires by far more elaborate explanations and a much more complicated strategy.