Vim Macros for Editing DocBook Documents

Recently, while helping Linux Journal convert its editorial process to use DocBook/XML for articles, I had occasion to convert some old Vim macros for use with the new process. The original macros were key maps or abbreviations for inserting Quark tags and special characters. The new editorial process involves marking or tagging a document in DocBook/XML. From there, a stylesheet is applied to convert the document either to Quark for publication in the print magazine or to HTML for publication on the Web site.

DocBook exists in two basic forms, an SGML version and a newer XML version. DocBook is a markup language that looks similar to HTML. It uses tags with attributes and ampersand sequences for specifying special characters and symbols. Listing 1 contains a short DocBook/XML article.

Listing 1. Sample DocBook/XML Article

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM "docbookx.dtd">

<article>

<!-- Article information. -->
<articleinfo>
    <!-- Article title and abstract. -->
    <title>This is an Uninteresting Sample article</title>
    <abstract>
        <para>This article isn't about anything interesting.</para>
    </abstract>

    <!-- Author name and bio. -->
    <author>
        <firstname>John</firstname> <surname>Doe</surname>
        <authorblurb>
            <para>The author is not a very interesting person.</para>
        </authorblurb>
    </author>
</articleinfo>


<!-- Body of article. -->
<simplesect>
    <title>This is the first of thankfully only
           one uninteresting section.</title>
    <para>True to form this is not very interesting either.</para>
</simplesect>

</article>

As you can see, the article structure is similar to HTML, except the tag names are different. The DOCTYPE line refers to the DTD (Document Type Definition) used to validate the file. To write useful DocBook, you need the DTD and a program to validate your document so you can determine if it contains any DocBook or XML errors. See the Resources at the end of the article for sites where you can get the DTD and programs for validating your documents.

Vim primarily is a work-a-like replacement for the original vi editor that came with many UNIX systems. Vim also contains many enhancements, including a quite capable macro/scripting language and a GUI version. Most Linux distributions should include Vim. Vim is a moded text editor; that is, keystrokes have different meanings depending on whether you're entering text or manipulating it.

The set of Vim macros used for our project are contained in the following files:

To use these files start vi and type:

:so tagtmps.vim
:so tfuncs.vim
:so mfuncs.vim
:so maps.vim

Normally, however, you would place these commands into a single file and source only it when you enter vim. For example, place the above files in a sub-directory named vim in your home directory. Then, put the following lines in a file named editdb.vim:

so ~/vim/tagtmps.vim      " Tag templates.
so ~/vim/tfuncs.vim       " Tag functions.
so ~/vim/mfuncs.vim       " Map functions.
so ~/vim/maps.vim         " Key mappings.

Now, start vi and type the following to load all the files with one command :so ~/editdb.vim. Another option is to source these files in your .vimrc file so they are loaded whenever you start vim. Your .vimrc file is located in your home directory.

Once these files have been read and processed by vim, the macros are bound to the keyboard. The macros provide the following capabilities: