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-Run:
-
-  bin/makedoc -pdf FILE...
-
-on one or more DocBook XML files, and PDF files with corresponding names will be
-generated.
-
-Try it on the provided DocBook primer (docbook-quick-start.xml).
-
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+# About
+
+This project is a quick-start documentation of [DocBook](http://docbook.org/). The [LOCKSS Team](http://www.lockss.org/) has bundled up a tool chain to process DocBook documents into PDF documents using XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) and Apache FOP 2.1. 
+
+## Requirements
+
+- Java 6 or newer
+- Git
+
+## Compile document
+
+In order to generate a PDF run
+
+  `bin/makedoc -pdf FILE...`
+
+on one or more DocBook XML files, and PDF files with corresponding names will be
+generated.
+
+Try it on the provided DocBook primer (docbook-quick-start.xml) using:
+
+  `bin/makedoc -pdf docbook-quick-start.xml`
+