Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
February/March 2006
| Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter February/March 2006 |
The February meeting is on Wednesday, February 15, 2006, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Elephant & Castle in San Francisco's financial district. For details about the location and instructions for purchasing tickets, visit www.stc-sf.org/stc-meetings.htm.
Single sourcing is the process of writing modular, reusable documentation components and assembling them into multiple output forms and versions. DocBook is an XML schema written specifically for technical publications, and it provides an open, vendor-neutral documentation file format. The DocBook XSL stylesheets can generate PDF, HTML, and Help files from DocBook XML files. The stylesheets provide all the features needed for technical publications, including conditional text, cross referencing, and localization. The stylesheets can be customized to match corporate or organizational specifications. This presentation will provide an introduction to DocBook and its XSL stylesheets, and will include a quick-start on customizing the stylesheets.
Bob Stayton is the principal consultant with Sagehill Enterprises, an independent center for DocBook development and implementation. Bob has been engaged in computer-based publishing since 1980, starting with WordStar and a daisy wheel printer, progressing to desktop publishing and laser printers, and now implementing XML-based publishing systems for multiple output formats. Bob is a member of OASIS, and is Secretary for the DocBook Technical Committee that develops and maintains the DocBook DTD standard. Bob is a member of the technical team for the DocBook Open Repository Project on SourceForge that develops the stylesheets and other tools. Bob is the author of DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide.
Copyright © 2005 by the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter (www.stc-sf.org). This article may be reprinted in another STC publication under the provisions of the chapter's copyright policy.