Re: Astronomy-HOWTO

[Tom Fawcett <fawcett@mindspring.com>]

Brian <briank@hex.net> wrote:
> David Lawyer wrote:
> > I too encourage you to write this Astronomy-HOWTO but
> >    suggest somehow putting "Linux" in the title such as
> >    Astronomy-Linux-HOWTO.
> 
> I have no problem with implementing your suggestion, and appreciate your
> response.  Right now I'm wrestling with the same problem that Terry had
> with the HAM-HOWTO that led to its demise:  Given the time involved to
> keep such a "pointer" document up-to-date, would it be more beneficial
> to simply create a web page, which would lend itself more readily to
> automating tasks such as keeping links updated, etc.?

Brian,

There are two questions:
- What's the effort involved in updating a web page vs an SGML document?
- What's the delay of updating your own web site vs pushing a document out
  through the LDP to linuxdoc.org and its mirrors?

IMO, changing URLs on a web site is about as fast as changing them in a
document, so that's a wash as far as your time is concerned.  I'd be more
concerned about the second question if your document is going to be updated
often.  The LDP has taken as long as 6 months (!) to update documents on
linuxdoc.org, but lately it's been about a week or two.  Until they get CVS
or automatied submission scripts I believe that's about as fast as it's
going to get.

Another issue is how much of the document is text vs links.  The more text
it includes, the better it is as an SGML document that can take multple
forms.

Regards,
-Tom

PS.  Regardless of what you decide, I think an Astronomy-HOWTO is a good idea.


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