Making a Reference Page

The reference page or manual page in DocBook was inspired by, and in fact designed to reproduce, the common UNIX “manpage” concept. (We use the word “page” loosely here to mean a document of variable length containing reference material on a specific topic.) DocBook is rich in markup tailored for such documents, which often vary greatly in content, however well structured they may be. To reflect both the structure and the variability of such texts, DocBook specifies that reference pages have a strict sequence of parts, even though several of them are actually optional.

Of the following sequence of elements that may appear in a refentry, only two are obligatory: refnamediv and either refsect1 or refsection.

info

The info element contains meta-information about the reference page (which should not be confused with refmeta, which it precedes). It marks up information about the author of the document, or the product to which it pertains, or the document’s revision history, or other such information.

refmeta

refmeta contains a title for the reference page (which may be inferred if the refmeta element is not present) and an indication of the volume number in which this reference page occurs. The manvolnum is a very UNIX-centric concept. In traditional UNIX documentation, the subject of a reference page is typically identified by name and volume number; this allows you to distinguish between the uname command, “uname(1)” in volume 1 of the documentation, and the uname function, “uname(3)” in volume 3.

Additional information of this sort, such as conformance or vendor information specific to the particular environment you are working in, may be stored in refmiscinfo.

refnamediv

The first obligatory element is refnamediv, which is a wrapper for information about whatever you’re documenting, rather than the document itself. It can begin with a refdescriptor if several items are being documented as a group and the group has a name. The refnamediv must contain at least one refname, that is, the name of whatever you’re documenting, and a single short statement that sums up the use or function of the item(s) at a glance: its refpurpose. Also available is the refclass, intended to detail the operating system configurations that the software element in question supports.

If no refentrytitle is given in the refmeta, the title of the reference page is the refdescriptor, if present, or the first refname.

refsynopsisdiv

A refsynopsisdiv is intended to provide a quick synopsis of the topic covered by the reference page. For commands, this is generally a syntax summary of the command, and for functions, the function prototype, but other options are possible. A title is allowed, but not required, presumably because the application that processes reference pages will generate the appropriate title if it is not given. In traditional UNIX documentation, its title is always “Synopsis.”

refsect1…refsect3

Within refentrys, there are only three levels of sectioning elements: refsect1, refsect2, and refsect3.

refsection

As with sect1, sect2, etc., there is a recursive version of the reference section elements: refsection.

Example 2-4 shows the beginning of a refentry that illustrates one possible reference page.

Example 2-4. A sample reference page

<refentry xml:id="printf">
  <refmeta>
    <refentrytitle>printf</refentrytitle>
      <manvolnum>3S</manvolnum>
  </refmeta>

  <refnamediv>
    <refname>printf</refname>
    <refname>fprintf</refname>
    <refname>sprintf</refname>
    <refpurpose>print formatted output</refpurpose>
  </refnamediv>

  <refsynopsisdiv>
    <funcsynopsis>
      <funcsynopsisinfo>
        #include <stdio.h>
      </funcsynopsisinfo>

      <funcprototype>
        <funcdef>int <function>printf</function></funcdef>
        <paramdef>const char *<parameter>format</parameter></paramdef>
        <varargs/>
      </funcprototype>

      <funcprototype>
        <funcdef>int <function>fprintf</function></funcdef>
        <paramdef>FILE *<parameter>strm</parameter></paramdef>
        <paramdef>const char *<parameter>format</parameter></paramdef>
        <varargs/>
      </funcprototype>

      <funcprototype>
        <funcdef>int <function>sprintf</function></funcdef>
        <paramdef>char *<parameter>s</parameter></paramdef>
        <paramdef>const char *<parameter>format</parameter></paramdef>
        <varargs/>
      </funcprototype>
    </funcsynopsis>

  </refsynopsisdiv>

  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
    <para><indexterm><primary>functions</primary>
                     <secondary>printf</secondary></indexterm>
          <indexterm><primary>printing function</primary></indexterm>

      <function>printf</function> places output on the standard
      output stream stdout.
    </para>
  </refsect1>
</refentry>
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