Vim plus DocBook

In my quest to ease writing XML files in Vim (DocBook is essentially XML with a proper schema), I found a nifty plugin for vim. Installing it, however, is not so nifty…

copy xml.vim to  ~/.vim/ftplugin/xml.vim

Next, do this (required for editing DocBook files):

ln -s ~/.vim/ftplugin/xml.vim ~/.vim/ftplugin/docbk.vim

In the above fashion, adapt the next step from the instructions to suit your needs:

optionally link (or copy on windows) xml.vim in ~/.vim/ftplugin directory to docbk.vim, xsl.vim, html.vim, xhtml.vim

To generate the plugin documentation for the first time, open a DocBook document, and then type (in command mode):

:help xml-plugin

This command will show the mappings and remaining functionality of the plugin. And you should be on your way.