Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing documents on a storage media, especially for use by computers.There currently exist a multitude of incompatible document file formats....
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
DAISY is a standard for digital talking books. DAISY books are typically used by people have "print disabilities," including blindness, impaired vision, dyslexia...
, as well as other places. Unlike other document file formats such as ODF DTBook puts a strong emphasis on structural encoding, but in comparison to other structural file formats such as DocBook
DocBook
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation....
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
it is fairly simple.
DTBook was developed by the Daisy Consortium as an accessible
Accessibility
Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity...
Visual impairment is vision loss to such a degree as to qualify as an additional support need through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as refractive...
. Therefore, it puts an emphasis on a clear, precise navigation and the explanation of visual elements.
DTBook is further developed by the Daisy Consortium and is defined with a DTD
Document Type Definition
Document Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...
The National Information Standards Organization is a United States non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and library applications. It was founded in 1939, incorporated as a not-for-profit education...
National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard
The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard helps facilitate timely access to alternate formats of instructional materials for students with visual impairments or other print disabilities. NIMAS outlines a set of consistent and valid XML-based source files created by K-12...
) – an U.S. standard for electronic books for the visually impaired – defines a subset of DTBook XML elements. NIMAS documents are valid according to the DTBook DTD.
Example
PUBLIC "-//NISO//DTD dtbook 2005-3//EN"
"http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/dtbook-2005-3.dtd">
