RE: Updates/changes to the HOWTO template.

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stein Gjoen [mailto:sgjoen@mail.nyx.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 1:33 AM
> To: Gregory Leblanc
> Cc: Greg Ferguson; Ldp Discuss List (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: Updates/changes to the HOWTO template.
> 
> Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> [big snip]
> 
> > How should linking between HOWTOs be accomplished?  In the 
> reading plan
> > example, "newbies" are recommended to read all of the other 
> disk related
> > HOWTOs.  If I were a newbie, I wouldn't know what to read.
> 
> This reopens a number of discussions, none successfully concluded.
> Ever the optimist I'll give it another try...

Aye, I know.  But I haven't even seen sufficient discussion on this topic...

> Inter-HOWTO linking is hard as we cannot know the final file structure
> in a distribution. All HTML files might be in one huge directory or
> in their own directory such as
> 	file:///usr/doc/HOWTO/Template/Template.html
> in which case a simpe relative link will fail.
> Worse, the HOWTOs might be under /usr/share/doc/HOWTO (for FHS)
> as opposed to under /usr/doc/HOWTO (as for the traditional FSSTND).

Hmm, I don't have access to a Linux machine right here, but I want to take a
look again.  I'm not sure, hmm...  What about just doing relative linking,
you know, without pointing to a specific place in the filesystem, just a
HOWTO?  Can we make the stylesheets or some pre-processor smart enough to
point to the right format of the HOWTO?  The plain text HOWTOs should just
include the name of that HOWTO, the HTML ones should point to the HTML
versions, the PDF versions to the PDF versions, etc.

> A post-installation script might work in which case a <HOWTO> tag
> might come in useful for inter-HOWTO linking.
> 
> The second problem of finding related HOWTOs by hand requires
> a single line synopsis and a set of keywords, neither of which
> is yet supported by LinuxDoc. I do hope I can persuade someone
> to make it.

Obviously, I'm not a big fan of Linuxdoc.  I don't think that extending it
is really worthwhile at this point.  I need to investigate that limited
DocBook DTD a bit more, and see if it's good for people who don't want to
try for the full DocBook DTD (although I don't really see why it's
appealing).  I also got Emacs on Win98 working pretty well on this loaner
notebook, except that OpenJade doesn't support multi-file DTD's.  What a
pain.  As soon as I get a Linux machine at home again, I'll work on Emacs
there.  BTW, I'll do it on a nice, slow SS2 (except for the screenshots,
since it's only got 8-bit graphics), just to show that the tools don't
require much horsepower (these machines cost me <$30).

> > Just as an informational thing, is vger still that 
> overloaded?  I know that
> > it's running on an SS10 now, rather than the old, slow IPX. 
>  Email through
> > the lists that I read there seems to be plenty fast, 
> especially since the
> > CVS repository is gone from there.
> 
> It seemed fast to me but you might wish to use some of the
> archives too:
> 	http://www.mail-archive.com/lists.html
> 	http://www.linuxhq.com/lnxlists/

Ahh, good point, it's nice to have the archives elsewhere.

> > In the section about other HOWTOs, is Metalab too generic 
> of a term?  There
> > are dozens of SunSites around the nation, but is it obvious 
> that we're
> > talking about the MetaLab machine hosted by the University of North
> > Carolina?
> 
> My impression was that Metalab was specific to the SunSite at UNC.
> Note that there are SunSites outside the US too.

D'oh!  I knew that, and I was thinking it, I just typed nation.  :-/  Yes, I
think that Metalab is specific to UNC, but does that mean that it's enough
information for the people who aren't already familiar with it?  (BTW,
Metalab isn't a sunsite anymore, Sun changed the deal for that).

> > I seem to recall someone mentioning a site that tried to 
> keep an up-to-date
> > list of all of the Linux Users Groups.  It would be nice to 
> include a link
> > to this site in the help section.
> 
> 	http://www.nlug.org/webring/
> 	http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/User-Group-HOWTO.html
> 	
> http://www2.linuxjournal.com/cgi-bin/frames.pl/glue/groups/index.html
> 	http://www.linux.org/users/index.html

Cool!  Thanks!  Perhaps I'll contact the User-Group-HOWTO maintainer and
find out how up-to-date that document is.  Is there any reference to this
HOWTO or these links on the page about the LDP lists?
	Greg


--  
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org