On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 07:52:24PM -0300, Bruno Negrão wrote: > >It should be the other way around. The man page system is the wrong > >way for a Wiki. You should tag each qmail program man page with the > >appropriate "Qmail_Programs" category tag. That way they will show > >up there by themselfes and you can remove the 'hardlinks' on the > >category page. > >Andre > Andre, but why to exchange the well-known, the easy-to-use, the > easy-to-contribute and the standardized Man organization tree to the > unknown, awkward, unformatted, never thought before "Qmail_XXXX categories" > organization? > > Dude, tell me you're going to change your mind and accept this well-known > model. >
The man page model is a good way to document stuff on your local system but it is not the ideal model for websites. On unix man(1) helps you finding the most appropriate page for a topic. A user does not need to specify if the page is in category 1, 5, 8 or whatever. For websites with hyperlinks that setup is retarded. Nobody looks for "man/man8/qmail-showctl.html" -- wait, qmail-showctl could also be in category 1... For websites massive linking is the way to go. Starting with easy to understand topics/categories (Programms, config files, env vars, LDAP entries). IMO a website should guide from a unclear question to a solution. Most often I go to I site looking for something by clicking on stuff that seems to go in the right direction hoping to find the solution somewhere down that path. > Guys, if someone out there thinks like me, help me convincing Andre to give > up that "categories" organization. Qmail-ldap is not an encyclopedia. (!!) > No but a wiki is neither a man page system. > I already posted *all* qmail manpages there on > http://www.qmail-ldap.org/index.php?title=Man. They are just waiting for > the authors to start changing them into qmail-ldap manpages (in wiki > format, of course). > > Andre, if you embrace this idea, I believe the guys will start editing the > manpages. Almost everything is already there, it's just to start editing. > > And, above all this, if I'm going to write a man page for a qmail program, > the man page should be under the Man category, not under Qmail-Program. ... > I don't think you are writing man pages. You are writing a html page that looks similar to a man page. A man page is normaly written in man or mdoc format and is rendered by groff/troff/nroff. I'm ok to put html formated man pages online but they should be generated by "groff -Thtml -mandoc". It does not make sense to emulate man pages online that do not exist on the local system. So it's getting late and I'm still waiting for my dying laptop disk to finish the copy onto the new disk... -- :wq Claudio
