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Re: Web Standards version 2.3



Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> 
> Bruce Perens:
> > "dwww" can get the name of the package from the directory, and the
> > description from whatever comes between <title> and </title> in the
> > Index.html
> 
> That's an interesting idea. Minimum fuss for packages. I like it.
> 

But in this way the package has anyway to provide a full index.html
file, and the title of a web page should be the shortest possible, thus
letting very little do say more than the name of the package.

With my proposal packages has to provide only a fragment of index,
leaving the freedom to add links to more structured html documents (a
specific index) in the directory.
We can set a limit to the fragment or, better, set up a policy and raise
bugs against verbose maintainers (like I am :-)



> A long index does need to be split into sections, but I guess
> that could be done based on which directory the package is in.
> 

Even following the minimal structure that Bruce suggested, that index
will have hundreds of rows!

I suggest:
* to split the index into sections (or into subindexes)
  options:
   - let the package's maintainer choose (e.g. using the name of the
     fragment) and putting all the packages that don't choose into a
     "misc" or "others" section. A package could have more than one
     fragment, for example a package that has documents in more than
     one language can have its fragments installed into the proper
     section of the index.
   - Build an intermediate level based on the Section which the package
     belongs is an actractive idea, but then we will have the most
     visited documents under /auto/doc/doc/doc-linux !!
   - we could let the doc packages in the same level with the other
     sections (this increases the difficulty of the build)

* to leave the use of the Description first row from
  /var/lib/dpkg/available only as a default for those packages that
  don't have the index fragment, being those rows more a description
  on how the package can be usefull, rather than explaining what's
  inside the /usr/doc subdirs.

* to let a group of related packages (those that are splitted into
  several binaries) installs a single entry in that index.


I know that these suggestions add complexity to the building of the
whole, but a well tested script can handle all this, letting enough
freedom to the packages to add or not the informations that they want,
without creating an unreadable monster page.

A long but well structured page is more readable than an half page
completely filled with only links.

Fabrizio
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