<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<essay xml:lang="en" version="pto" xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:gal="http://norman.walsh.name/rdf/gallery#">
<info>
    
    
    
    
    
    
<title>DocBook V4.4 Released</title><biblioid class="uri">http://norman.walsh.name/2005/01/28/docbook44</biblioid>
<volumenum>8</volumenum>
<issuenum>13</issuenum>
<pubdate>2005-01-28T10:42:21-05:00</pubdate>
<date>$Date: 2005-09-11 10:27:02 -0400 (Sun, 11 Sep 2005) $</date>
<author>
      <personname>
<firstname>Norman</firstname>
	<surname>Walsh</surname>
</personname>
    </author>
<copyright>
      <year>2005</year>
      <holder>Norman Walsh</holder>
    </copyright>
<abstract>
<para>The DocBook Technical Committee has released DocBook V4.4 as
a Committee Draft.</para>
</abstract>
<dc:subject rdf:resource="http://norman.walsh.name/knows/taxonomy#DocBook"/>
</info>

<para xml:id="p1">DocBook V4.4 is now a Committee Draft. In the OASIS
<link xlink:href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/guidelines.php#spectostand">process</link>,
that represents the last step before full OASIS Standard; it indicates
that the document represents the consensus of the technical committee.
It's as high as we can take it without getting a full vote of the
entire OASIS membership.</para>

<para xml:id="p2">Version 4.4 is backwards-compatible with all of the schemas in the
V4.x series. The new features are:</para>

<itemizedlist spacing="compact">

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p3">Added <tag class="attribute">rowheader</tag> attribute
to CALS <tag>table</tag> and <tag>informaltable</tag>.
If <tag class="attribute">rowheader</tag> is
<tag class="attvalue">firstcol</tag>, the first column of each
row is to be treated as a row header. If
<tag class="attvalue">norowheader</tag> is specified,
no special treatment is
given to the first column of each row.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p4">Added <tag class="attribute">wordsize</tag> as a
global effectivity attribute, per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-06-16.txt">June, 2004</link>
minutes.</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p5">Added <tag class="attribute">xml:space</tag> to verbatim
environments in the XML schemas.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p6">Added “<literal>protocol</literal>” to the list of class values
allowed on the <tag>systemitem</tag> element.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p7">Added the HTML forms hook to several “mix” parameter entities so
that HTML forms can occur in more places when the HTML Forms Module is used.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p8">Switched to the W3C
<link xlink:href="http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/">XML Entity Declarations for
Characters</link>. These entities are distributed for historical
compatibility and user convenience. The DocBook Technical Committee no
longer attempts to maintain these definitions and will periodically
update them from the W3C site if and as they are updated there.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p9">Removed <tag class="attribute">xml:base</tag> from
the SGML DTD.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p10">Allow HTML tables to nest (allow <tag>table</tag>
and <tag>informaltable</tag> inside <tag>td</tag> and
<tag>th</tag>).
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p11">Changed the <tag class="attribute">rules</tag> attribute,
which can appear on HTML tables, from an enumeration to <literal>CDATA</literal>.
This avoids a conflict with the enumerated values on the
<tag class="attribute">frame</tag> attribute on CALS tables.</para>
</listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p12">Added <tag>package</tag> element per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-02-18.txt">Febuary, 2004</link> 
meeting.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p13">Allow <tag>imageobjectco</tag> as a child of
<tag>mediaobject</tag> (this effectively makes
<tag>mediaobjectco</tag> unnecessary) per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-02-18.txt">Febuary, 2004</link> 
meeting.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p14">Added <tag>biblioref</tag> element per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-05-19.txt">May, 2004</link> 
meeting.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p15">Added <tag class="attribute">spacing</tag> attribute
to <tag>variablelist</tag> per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-04-21.txt">April, 2004</link> 
meeting.
</para>
    </listitem>

<listitem>
      <para xml:id="p16">Added <tag>superscript</tag> and
<tag>subscript</tag> to the content model of the
<tag>gui<replaceable>*</replaceable></tag> elements
per the
<link xlink:href="http://docbook.org/minutes/2004-05-19.txt">May, 2004</link> 
meeting.
</para>
    </listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para xml:id="p17">Share and enjoy!</para>

<para xml:id="p18">I am optimistic that the next schema the technical committee publishes
will be V5.0α1.</para>

</essay>

