2.1. Presentation of the Tools

This section describes how to work with DocBook on Unix-like systems like Linux. If you unfortunately are working on some other operating system, you might need to gather and configure the needed tools by yourself or to buy a commercial solution.

The technology around DocBook evolves. In the past:

• DocBook started as a "SGML application", just like HTML did.

• DocBook documents used being converted with the help of DSSSL style sheets.

• The PDF layout was accomplished through TeX typesetting engine.

Now, on the contrary:

• DocBook follows the syntax of XML, just like XHTML does.

• It is converted to other formats by XSLT style sheets.

• PDF layout being done through a XSL-FO engine.

The tools used to process DocBook files have to keep up with this evolution. We will successively present the DocBook-tools (SGML/DSSSL technology) and XSLTProc/FOP (XML/XSL technology).