Re: RFC: A default html file
>
> Thanks for the comments on doc, guys. I think I will package the old 'doc' as
> `doclinux' and create a new `docdebian' with Debian specific documentation,
> especially as Ian M. promised the manual for today :-)
> (As an aside: doclinux and docdebian or rather doc-linux and doc-debian ?)
doclinux & docdebian seem better. Dashes in the name make it harder to type
and harder to parse out the version portions. (I think that there are other
packages already that have dashes in their names, but we don't need to add to
the problem.)
> Erick pointed out to me that this could be a good place for a defaults html
> file, say debian.html or homepage.html that all the related programs (ie
> lynx, chimera, w3-el, cern-httpd and more to come as apache etc) could use as
> the default home page with url file://localhost/etc/debian.html.
This (/etc) seems a rather bad place for documentation. Perhaps
/usr/doc/debian/debian.html would be better. A configuration file to specify
this or some other file could go in /etc/httpd or /etc/html or some-such.
> This could be tested very simply in their postinst as
> if [ -f /etc/debian.html ]
> then
> # some sed stuff to make it the default home page
> else
> # some default action
> fi
>
> Or should such a file rather be part of the base package as debiandoc will
> not have priorities `required' or `standard'?
There was a request/suggestion that all of the various documentation available
(info, man, docs, etc) be built into one html document tree. Whatever you do
here should either lead into this task, or at least not make it harder. (I am
thinking of taking on that project, but my plate is so full right now, that I
need to finish up a bunch of other things first. -- Don't let me get in the way
of someone else actually doing something on this.
> What do you think? What would you like to see as the contents of this default
> homepage? Pointers to www.debian.org, pointers to /usr/doc/*, to
> /usr/doc/copyright/* ?
I think we might want to have the default home page on a Debian system point
to the local users' home pages as well as the generic Debian information. As
pointed out above, there might someday be a full html tree of documentation
at which we should point. We should certainly point out the copyright
information at every opportunity, lest someone claim that we violated their
copyright by allowing users to use their program without seeing some required
notification.
> --
> Dirk.Eddelbuettel@qed.econ.queensu.ca http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd
Oh yes, there are various documents which are refered to by the man pages
which are not, themselves, man pages. There are also a whole body of Internet
RFCs out there. Both of these sets of documents would be nice to have as a
Debian package.
--
David H. Silber dhs@firefly.com Project: Debian GNU/Linux (dbackup)
<http://www.access.digex.net/~dhs/> Wanted: Spare time.
Programmer for hire.
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