[O] Making DocBook xml books from org mode?

[Peter Davis]

I've started a new position in which I have to create and maintain a
large set of documents in DocBook xml format. For new books, I'd really
like to use org mode, since a) I'm already familiar with it, b) I love
it, and c) I believe it does (or can be made to do) nearly everything I
need.

However, after Googling around the org-mode/DocBook space, I'm left with
some questions.

1. I'm going to be creating books, as opposed to articles. My org-header
looks like this:

#+STARTUP: showeverything logdone
#+OPTIONS:   H:5 num:t \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:nil -:t f:t *:t <:t
#+LaTeX_CLASS: koma-article
#+LaTeX_HEADER: \usepackage{listings}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \setlength{\parskip}{2ex plus 4pt minus 2pt}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.0}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \setlength{\topsep}{-10pt}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \setlength{\partopsep}{0pt}
#+LaTeX_HEADER: \usepackage{xcolor}
#+LaTeX_HEADER: \lstset{
#+LaTeX_HEADER:     basicstyle=\ttfamily,
#+LaTeX_HEADER:     breaklines=true,
#+LaTeX_HEADER:    
prebreak=\mbox{\ensuremath{\color{red}\hookleftarrow}},
#+LaTeX_HEADER:    
postbreak=\raisebox{0ex}[0ex][0ex]{\ensuremath{\color{red}\hookrightarrow\space}},
#+LaTeX_HEADER:     columns=fullflexible,
#+LaTeX_HEADER:     keepspaces=true
#+LaTeX_HEADER: }
#+LaTeX_CLASS_OPTIONS:
[book,letterpaper,times,12pt,listings-bw,microtype]

    but the PDFs I'm getting still look like articles. (I copied the
    above from some examples posted on this list a while ago. Thanks!)

 2. Are there any advantages to considering MarkDown or AsciiDoc as
 opposed to org markup? (Again, my familiarity with org is a strong
 incentive here, but I'm willing to consider other options.)

 3. The direct route from org to DocBook xml seems to be missing. From
 what I gather, I can get there somehow via texi (but I don't even have
 that in org currently), or perhaps export to HTML and then convert that
 to db xml. Am I missing something? Is there some other route I should
 consider?

 4. [LONGSHOT] Is there any way to /import/ docbook xml into org mode?

Thank you very much.

-pd

-- 
  Peter Davis
  www.techcurmudgeon.com