debian-doc mailing list exists
At the suggestion of folks listed above, a mailing list has been set up
called "debian-doc@lists.debian.org". Thanks to Pete Templin for his
timely help!
If interested, you may subscribe by sending a message to:
debian-doc-request@lists.debian.org
with the word "subscribe" _in the body_ of the message.
There are several motives for setting up this list: There currently
exists no user manual, or set of manuals, per se; the FAQ is not an
appropriate substitute for such a manual. (This mailing list is partly
a result of the fact that the current FAQ is being re-written and
greatly expanded, due to the lack of other documentation. It is now
widely agreed that much of the information in the FAQ should be
transferred to conventional manuals.)
Before proceeding too far, it is worthwhile to spend some time defining
initial goals. To me, one way to proceed is by asking, How should the
current documentation set differ, for example, from the excellent Linux
HOWTO's? My answers are:
a) To optimize the use of both the writers' time and the readers' time,
it will be necessary to exercise a high degree of interlinking, which is
not common to the HOWTO documents.
b) Eventually, the Debian WWW site, the Debian FAQ, the Debian documentation
system, (including the policy and programmer's manuals), the evolving
Debian FTP archives, and dwww should all work together and synergistically.
c) The Debian documentation should contain information customized for
the Debian system; it should not contain any details that are only
relevant to foreign systems. For example, if a Debian package <foo> is
set up so that when it's installed it will already have certain
configuration files or some default operation, then the user should just
be informed of that setup, rather than exposed to all of the possible
setups that he might consider.
d) The Debian documents should be tunable (IMHO) to the user's needs, e.g.,
if he has all the documentation present on his own or a local system,
then links in his documentation should point to links on that local system,
except where external links are absolutely demanded. This idea will
need a lot of refinement in order to define _except_.
These points need to be discussed and refined. Once that's done, then
we can begin to design the documents, set up some prototypes or examples,
and then (hopefully) divide the work.
On the other hand, if this strikes readers as a bad way to proceed,
then please offer (on debian-doc) an alternative procedure.
Best regards,
Susan Kleinmann
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