6. Production Tools

This chapter describes the tools used by The Open Group to develop and maintain technical publications.

6.1 Microsoft Word

Microsoft® Word is used to develop and maintain the majority of technical publications published by The Open Group.

6.1.1 Document Templates

For all technical publications developed and maintained using Microsoft Word, The Open Group provides templates (see B. Resources ).

6.2 AsciiDoc Text Processing

More documents are being developed using the AsciiDoc text processing tool. This is combined with GitLab, an environment for document development (see B. Resources ).

6.3 UNIX Text Processing

For some complex technical publications (such as the UNIX Standard), the troff text processing tool is used.

6.4 Source Control

It is important to maintain source control for The Open Group documents.

6.4.1 General

Regardless of the document development tool used, all drafts should be carefully identified (typically by number), and kept for reference at least until the document is finally approved and published.

6.4.2 GitLab

For documents developed using GitLab, the Git repository can be used for version control.

6.4.3 SCCS

For documents that are created and maintained using troff, SCCS is used for archiving and document version control.

To use SCCS, each file should contain the following string definition as its second line:

.ds SI %Z% %I% %E%

It must not be changed since these are SCCS keywords. When the file is extracted from SCCS, SCCS substitutes values for %Z% %I% %E%, indicating the exact version of the file. This feature is used to identify drafts built from a specific SCCS version.

6.5 Bug-Tracking

The corrigenda process is used to publish known errors or omissions in documents published by The Open Group.

All corrigenda against the same specification are collected together, so that there is one file per document, organized as follows:

• New and any previous corrigenda text is provided in reverse chronological order
• Each section is clearly marked and dated
• A new document number is allocated to each revision
• A list of superseded corrigenda items is provided at the start of the corrigendum file

6.6 Difference Marking Between Versions

At any time, it should be possible to display differences between two different versions of a document. (For example, by using change bars, or redline markings.)

Difference markings are not typically used in published documents.

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