> This is a fine idea, but I'm not certain it is the right one.
>
> I like the idea of man pages. Methinks distributing any Unix program
> without them is a mistake. On the other hand, AT&T at one point shipped
> System V without them, providing a "user-friendly help system" instead,
> and the GNU project long ago dropped them in favour of info format
> documentation. I think both those decisions were serious errors, and
> I'm likely not alone, but that doesn't matter much.
>
> For a 1970's design design, man pages were wonderful. Available online
> or printed (I'd been using Unix for weeks before I discovered that
> printed manuals existed), with an effective system of cross-references.
> To me, those are basic criteria for any worthwhile documentation, and
> I'm continually amazed that people still produce things that don't
> meet them.
>
> But we've got some man pages, some info docs, LDP docs mostly in SGML,
> some mini-HowTos in HTML, various web documents also in HTML, no doubt
> some XML and TeX somewhere in the mix, ...
>
> And we need a common format. You are absolutely right on that point!
> But I think that format should be HTML, not nroff man pages.
[lots of stuff deleted]
You seem to have missed a point regarding LDP. LDP docs are mostly in
SGML (or rather, linuxdoc-sgml), but the point of this format is all of
its output formats. It outputs nroff man page format (so man still
works), html, postscript, and whatever else somebody wants to code. One
can argue that techinfo is more powerful, but that's exactly why I like
linuxdoc-sgml. Simple is good.
Deb has already fallen prey to my LyX evangelism. LyX (www.lyx.org) is
a pretty easy to use WYSYWIM (what you see is what you *mean*) GUI
editor. One of the formats it can edit is linuxdoc-sgml, so you don't
even have to learn the tags.
-john.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
John D. Blair author/software engineer/linux specialist
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
