Writing proceedings for the SVG Open 2008 conference conference proceedings paper formats Andreas Neumann a.neumann@carto.net Andreas Neumann is the coordinator for the GIS activities in the City of Uster. His job is to organize and coordinate the city's GIS activities, design and operate the central geodatabase, identify requirements, integrate software and develop the Web-GIS activities. GIS coordinator City of Uster Department of Construction

Uster Oberlandstrasse 78 8610 Switzerland ++41-44-944 72 66 ++41-44-944 67 42

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate the use of the Docbook 5.0 format, explain the reasons why docbook was chosen as the paper format for the SVG Open conference, and prepare a sample structure as a starter for your own document.

At the first SVG Open conference in Zurich, 2002, we instructed paper authors to submit their papers in XHTML format. We provided a sample structure as XHTML and CSS stylesheets in order to get a similar structure and look for all papers. We asked authors to validate their papers at the W3C XHTML validator prior to submission. Unfortunately, only a minority of the authors delivered well-formed and valid XHTML files. Even worse, some authors used Microsoft Word or similar tools to generate their XHTML files. It is well-known that MS Word (esp. older versions) creates non-valid and suboptimal XHTML code. The organizers of the first SVG Open conference spent many hours to correct the most obvious and severe XHTML errors. As a consequence, the organizers of the second edition of the conference (2003) requested gcapaper, a subset of the docbook format. In recent years, the standard docbook (article profile) was requested. This has the advantage that authors can use standard XML editors or specialized docbook editors, while the conference organizers get a more structured, well-formed and valid result files. The organizers provide XSLT files for conversion to the XHTML format. Alternatively, the same source file could be used for conversion to other formats, such as the PDF format. Docbook is widely used in technical documentation, as a documentation source for many open source projects, and in the publishing industry. Finally, docbook plays well with SVG content (both inline and external) and other multimedia objects (such as audio and video).

For the purpose of conference proceedings, the docbook "article" type is the logical choice. Following is the basic structure of an article, consisting of the XML header, the root element (<article/>), containing the <info/> section and the document itself (the sections):

Writing proceedings for the SVG Open 2008 conference paper formats conference proceedings Mark Foster mark.foster@nowhere.com Some information about the person ... Chief documentation officer Nowhere.com

New York 345 Fifth Avenue 23509 United States ++1-44-944 72 66 ++1-44-944

Prof. Dr Michael Müller michael.mueller@nowhere.com Dr. Müller is the technical directory of the company nowhere.com CTO Nowhere.com

New York 345 Fifth Avenue 23509 United States ++1-44-944 72 66 ++1-44-944

The purpose of this document is ...

A paragraph ...

A paragraph ...

]]> In the <info/> section you should add the document <title/> and <subtitle/>, information about the authors (<author/> or <authorgroup/>) and a short <abstract/>. The <author/> element contains the <personname/> element, the <email/> element, the <personblurb/> element and the <affiliation/> (containing the jobtitle and information on the organization). The main "body" of the article follows after the <info/> section, and should start with a <sect1/> or <section/> element. Information on the article "body" follows in the next section.

The main body of the article may be structured either like Para 1

A paragraph ...

A paragraph ...

A paragraph ...

]]> or like Para 1 A paragraph ... A paragraph ... A paragraph ... ]]> Which of the two methods you choose is up to you.

Itemized are also known as bulleted lists in word processors. They are written as follows: circle rect ellipse ]]> circle rect ellipse

In the ordered list the <listitem/>s are labeled in an ordered fashion, either with arabic numbers, upper- or lower-case alphabetic numeration, upper- or lower-case roman numerations. circle rect ellipse ]]> circle rect ellipse

You can embed both raster (png or jpeg) or vector graphics (svg), using the <figure/> element and a <mediaobject/> inside the figure element. You shouldn't change image alignment parameters. These are handled with XSLT conversion.

A graphic illustrating the width and depth, align and valign attribute, as well as the intrinsic size of the image. For a better reference of the <imagedata/> element see the docbook reference. ]]>

A graphic illustrating the width and depth, align and valign attribute, as well as the intrinsic size of the image. For a better reference of the <imagedata/> element see the docbook reference.

A graphic illustrating the width and depth, align and valign attribute, as well as the intrinsic size of the image. ]]>

A graphic illustrating the width and depth, align and valign attribute, as well as the intrinsic size of the image.

For linking to external resources one can use the <link/> element with the xlink:href attribute. In order to enable external links one has to add the xlink namespace ( xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink") in the <article/> root element, as demonstrated above. Following is an example of a link to an external resource. Please visit the SVG Open website. ]]>

For linking to internal resources one can use the <link/> element with the linkend attribute. Another element needs to have a unique xml:id where the attribute linkend can link to, as demonstrated below: The document structure ... as demonstrated in the section "document structure". ]]>

The element <programlisting/> together with a <![CDATA[ ... ]]> section allows the publishing of program or XML source-code, without having to replace special characters, such as "<" and ">": ]]]]> ]]>

Following is an example for a table and its rendering. Horizontal Span a3 a4 a5 f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 b1 b2 b3 b4 Vertical Span c1 Span Both c4 d1 d4 d5 ]]> Horizontal Span a3 a4 a5 f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 b1 b2 b3 b4 Vertical Span c1 Span Both c4 d1 d4 d5

Following is the code of a <bibliography/> element, the <bibliodiv/> element for adding structure in the bibliography, and individual <biblioentry/> elements: AhoSethiUllman96 Alfred V.Aho RaviSethi Jeffrey D.Ullman 1996 Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. James T.DeWolf 0-201-10088-6 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company AndreaBahadur MarkShwarek 19741975 Product Development International Holding N. V. 0-88459-021-6 Plenary Publications International, Inc. Ancient Craft to Modern Sport 988-999 Walsh97 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1085-2301 DanConnolly WalshNorman 1997ArborText, Inc. 97-108 ]]> The rendering of the bibliography can be seen at the end of page. A reference to an entry in the bibliography can be made as follows: state that ... ]]> state that ...

Docbook resources can be found at the official docbook homepage. There is the official DocBook 5 specification, a free downloadable DocBook book, a DocBook FAQ and a DocBook XSLT book available to help you get started. A listing of XML editors supporting docbook and specialized docbook editors is available from the DocBook Wiki.

AhoSethiUllman96 Alfred V.Aho RaviSethi Jeffrey D.Ullman 1996 Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. James T.DeWolf 0-201-10088-6 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company AndreaBahadur MarkShwarek 19741975 Product Development International Holding N. V. 0-88459-021-6 Plenary Publications International, Inc. Ancient Craft to Modern Sport 988-999 Walsh97 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1085-2301 DanConnolly WalshNorman 1997ArborText, Inc. 97-108