DocBook Files

Release Notes for the DocBook XSL Stylesheets

$Revision: 9372 $ $Date: 2012-05-20 04:38:17 +0000 (Sun, 20 May 2012) $

2012-05-20

This release-notes document is available in the following formats: HTML, PDF,
plain text; it provides a per-release list of enhancements and changes to the
stylesheets’ public APIs (user-configurable parameters) and excludes
descriptions of most bug fixes. For a complete list of all changes (including
all bug fixes) that have been made since the previous release, see the separate
NEWS (plain text) or NEWS.html files. Also available: An online hyperlinked
change history (warning: big file) of all changes made over the entire history
of the codebase.

As with all DocBook Project dot-zero releases, this is an experimental release.
It will be followed shortly by a stable release.


Release Notes: 1.77.0

The following list summarizes the major changes that have been made since the
1.76.1 release. It is followed by sections detailing changes to individual
files from the SVN checkin logs, edited to remove housekeeping changes and bug
fixes. See the NEWS.xml file for a complete unedited list of SVN changes.

  -- Gentext

    webhelp

        Many improvements to the generated text for webhelp output.

  -- Common

    Support more media types

        Expanded list of supported filename extensions for media to include
        video and audio, mostly for HTML5 and EPUB3 outputs.

    Topic element

        Add basic support for new topic element, which is available in DocBook
        5.1. Generally a topic element will be used with assembly and may be
        transformed to some other hierarchical element during processing, but
        it can also be formatted as a plain topic.

  -- FO

    Add para.properties attribute-set

        Add a para.properties attribute-set that applies only to para elements.
        That allows still using normal.para.spacing attribute-set for many
        block elements for uniform spacing, but allows separate formatting of
        para elements.

    List of titles in article

        Add support for List of Tables, List of Figures, etc. for articles and
        other component-level elements. Includes a new template for each in
        autotoc.xsl, new attribute-sets in titlepage.xsl, and new entries in
        the titlepage.templates.xml file tu support customization.

    Customizing links in FO

        Add template mode simple.xlink.properties to allow easy customization
        of formatting of links generated from elements that use the xlink
        attributes. This extends link formatting beyond that of xref, link, and
        olink which use xref.properties attribute-set.

    Table caption

        The caption element in an HTML table is now handled like a title in a
        CALS table, using the formal.object.title template with all its
        features, including placement. Now caption template in mode="htmlTable"
        does nothing, because caption handled by formal.object.title template.
        Also adds support for table caption element in a CALS table, placing it
        after the table.

    Graphics attribute handling

        Refactored the big process.image template to use individual templates
        such as image.width for most attributes to allow easier customization
        of individual properties.

    Side regions

        Add support for side page regions in addition to header and footer
        regions. This feature lets you add running content to the side margins,
        and by default the content is rotated 90 degrees. Adds new templates
        named running.side.content, region.inner and region.outer; new template
        modes region.inner.mode and region.outer.mode; new parameters named
        region.inner.extent, region.outer.extent, body.margin.inner,
        body.margin.outer, and side.region.precedence; and new attribute-sets
        named inner.region.content.properties, outer.region.content.properties,
        region.inner.properties, and region.outer.properties.

    Callout formatting

        Add new attribute-sets for calloutlist.

    Topic element

        Add basic support for formatting a topic element, which is available in
        DocBook 5.1.

  -- HTML

    HTML5

        Add variables to the base HTML stylesheets that can be adjusted for the
        HTML5 stylesheets.

    Insert Javascript reference

        Add support for html.script param to insert reference to a Javascript
        file.

    Namespace for titlepage mechanism.

        Titlepage mechanism is now namespace aware to support XHTML.

    Chunked filename prefix

        New param named chunked.filename.prefix lets you add a filename prefix
        to each chunked file. This replaces the buggy practice of adding such a
        prefix to the base.dir param. Now the base.dir param will always have a
        trailing slash added if it is not present, so you no longer have to
        remember to add it to the param value.

    Generate id attributes

        The stylesheet param generate.id.attributes already existed but was
        incompletely implemented. Now when it is set to 1, only id attributes
        should be output, not <a name> named anchors.

    Generate consistent id attributes

        New generate.consistent.ids parameter which allows generating a more
        stable id values based on XPath rather than the generate-id() function,
        which may not produce consistent values between runs. Stable output ids
        allow you to make stable links to generated content from the outside.

    Topic element

        Add basic support for formatting a topic element, which is available in
        DocBook 5.1. Generally a topic element will be used with assembly and
        may be transformed to some other hierarchical element during
        processing, but it can also be formatted as a plain topic.

  -- Webhelp

    Webhelp refactored

        Webhelp templates refactored to better support customization.

    Added documentation.

        More and better documentation added.

    Webhelp generated text

        Many improvements to the generated text for webhelp output.

  -- XHTML5

    New stylesheets to generate HTML5 output, in an XML serialization. These
    templates are a customization layer on top of the XHTML stylesheet files.

  -- EPUB3

    New stylesheets to generate EPUB3 output. These templates are a
    customization layer on top of the xhtml5 stylesheet files.

  -- Assembly

    New assembly.xsl stylesheet to convert a DocBook 5.1 assembly into a
    standard DocBook 5 document. Also includes a topic-maker-chunk.xsl
    stylesheet that can convert a DocBook 5 book or article document into an
    assembly with a collection of modular files, including converting some
    elements to topic files.