////
Included in:

- user-manual: DocBook
////

Asciidoctor can produce DocBook 5.0 output.
Since the AsciiDoc syntax was designed with DocBook output in mind, the conversion is very good.
There's a corresponding DocBook element for each markup in the AsciiDoc syntax.

To convert the `mysample.adoc` document to DocBook 5.0 format, call the processor with the backend flag set to `docbook`.

 $ asciidoctor -b docbook mysample.adoc

A new XML document, named `mysample.xml`, will now be present in the current directory.

 $ ls
 mysample.adoc  mysample.html  mysample.xml

Here's a snippet of the XML generated by the DocBook converter.

.XML generated from AsciiDoc
[source,xml]
----
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
    xmlns:xl="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0" xml:lang="en">
  <info>
    <title>Hello, AsciiDoc!</title>
    <date>2013-09-03</date>
    <author>
      <personname>
        <firstname>Doc</firstname>
        <surname>Writer</surname>
      </personname>
      <email>doc@example.com</email>
    </author>
    <authorinitials>DW</authorinitials>
  </info>
  <simpara>
    An introduction to <link xl:href="http://asciidoc.org">AsciiDoc</link>.
  </simpara>
  <section xml:id="_first_section">
    <title>First Section</title>
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <simpara>item 1</simpara>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <simpara>item 2</simpara>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
  </section>
</article>
----

If you're on Linux, you can view the DocBook file with {uri-yelp}[Yelp].

 $ yelp mysample.xml

And of course, if you're using the Asciidoctor Ruby API, you can generate a DocBook document directly from your application.

.Generate DocBook output from the API
[source,ruby]
----
Asciidoctor.convert_file 'mysample.adoc', backend: 'docbook'
----

By default, the docbook converter produces DocBook 5.0 output that is compliant to the DocBook 5.0 specification.

A summary of the differences are as follows:

* XSD declarations are used on the document root instead of a DTD
* `<info>` elements for document info instead of `<articleinfo>` and `<bookinfo>`
* elements that hold the author's name are wrapped in a `<personname>` element
* the id for an element is defined using an `xml:id` attribute
* `<link>` is used for links instead of `<ulink>`
* the URL for a link is defined using the `xl:href` attribute

Refer to {uri-docbook5}[What's new in DocBook v5.0?] for more details about how DocBook 5.0 differs from DocBook 4.5.

If you need to output DocBook 4.5, you may find the community-supported {uri-docbook45}[DocBook 4.5 Converter] useful.

 $ asciidoctor -b docbook45 mysample.adoc