On 14-Apr-99 Bruce O. Benson wrote:
> Eric Raymond sat down with me once ansd showed me how he collated/edited
> the last
> edition of the HOWTOs. Basically he whipped all of the authors into a
> single format that could be easily typeset adn put up as HTML. I think it
> was SGML....I could ask if need be. But the point is valid -- no matter
> what form it's in, it could be munged into others. The informations is
> must usefule when it is most 'alive' IMHO....i.e. malleable and quickly
> revisable by the community, but still shepherded by someone who will make
> sure it has a decent appearance.
>
Maybe a way forward is to look at 'DocBook' format, which is used by the
gnome people (amongst others). This seems to be a pretty useful sgml DTD
which has tools to convert it to every format you are likely to want already
written.
There are two issues outstanding, it seems to me, the first is does someone
want to own the problem of implementing the 'new' format and secondly should
it remain a 'HOW-TO'. The answer to the first is easy, I will if no-one else
wants to do it. The second is harder, the great advantage with the HOW-TO
system is that it gets packaged in with most of the distributions so it is
available whether you are connected to the internet or not (not everyone who
uses Linux for Ham Radio or other purposes necessarily is).
More views?
Dirk G1TLH
---
Dirk-Jan Koopman, Tobit Computer Co Ltd
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find
at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
