On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, [ISO-8859-1] Thomas Schöfbeck wrote: > Hi there, > > looking at the current - esp. for newbies sometimes confusing - manual, > where several old info and even functions simply disappeared, but > several exlanations and even whole chapters (like 'Migrating from PHP/FI > 2 to PHP 3') for PHP 3 still exist, etc., one thought came into my mind: > > Why not take the chance of the intro of PHP 5 and branch the existing > manual (still provide the last built version for download), take out all > the php 3 chapters (and step by step the old info) to have a clean - > structured - manaul explicitly for php 5 just with the differences to > the last php 4 version?
PHP 4 isn't much different than PHP 5. Forking the manual this way sounds like a lot of needless work. I'm -1 on this idea as it doesn't seem useful. But maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Regarding PHP 3 specific information, this indeed should be moved but not simply deleted. History is good. Another idea would be to move all PHP 3 specific information into a PHP 3 section and where the information was, point to it instead. So something like: <link linkend="php3.something.somewhere">php3 note</link> This would replace the explanation with a link to the explanation in the PHP 3 specific section. A section that once created will never need to be touched. And I bet there are still a few PHP 3 users out there :) > P.S. Other questions like this will follow, like: > > Since we aren't able to build a pdf-version due to a lack of resources: > Why don't we make the FAQ an extra document (esp. for 'bundled' builds > like chm, pdf, bightml, ... - I've never read a book where chap. 43 > describes the same thing like chap. 3, just with a question as title ;)? I see no need to split up the manual like this. The only split that makes sense is the developmental manual from the users manual. Anything else I disagree with. The faq is small and barely affects the overall size of the PHP manual. And, information overlap is small but it's similar information presented in a different more verbose way. The faq should remain in the manual as is. Decisions should never be based off whether or not a PDF can be created. Eventually someone will come up with an idea to make it work nomatter what size the manual becomes. Regards, Philip -- PHP Documentation Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
