A procedure encapsulates a task composed of steps (and possibly, substeps). Procedures are usually performed sequentially, unless individual steps direct the reader explicitly.

Often it is important to ensure that certain conditions exist before a procedure is performed, and that the outcome of the procedure matches the expected results. DocBook does not provide explicit semantic markup for these pre- and post-conditions. Instead, they must be described as steps (check the preconditions in the first step and the results in the last step), or described outside the body of the procedure.

The task element, added to DocBook in V4.3, provides some of this infrastructure.

<article xmlns='http://docbook.org/ns/docbook'>
<title>Example procedure</title>

<procedure><title>An Example Procedure</title>
<step>
  <para>    A Step
  </para>
</step>
<step>
  <para>    Another Step
  </para>
  <substeps>
    <step>
      <para>        Substeps can be nested indefinitely deep.
      </para>
    </step>
  </substeps>
</step>
<step>
  <para>    A Final Step
  </para>
</step>
</procedure>

</article>

An Example Procedure

1. A Step

2. Another Step

   1. Substeps can be nested indefinitely deep.

3. A Final Step