First, don't be worried about learning another language or
syntax because DocBook is fairly straight forward and most
contributors simply cut-n-paste existing files, modify the
content, then commit. It's just plain text. What is DocBook? The
following is a quote from » DocBook: The Definitive Guide:
DocBook is a very popular set of tags for describing books,
articles, and other prose documents, particularly technical
documentation. DocBook is defined using the native DTD syntax of
SGML and XML. Like HTML, DocBook is an example of a markup
language defined in SGML/XML. Simply this means that writing a
DocBook file is no more than writing a text file and using a few
simple "tags" when needed. Like HTML, an opening tag is a <
bracket followed by the tag's name, optionally some arguments,
and then the > bracket (e.g. <para> for paragraphs). A closing
tag is a < bracket followed by a / sign, the tag name, then the
closing > bracket (e.g. </para> for paragraphs). For example
uses, have a look at an existing file wi