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Re: Debian Policy based on the wrong technical assumptions



> Requiring a web server for reading documentation is overkill.

I don't think so. It's part of the price you _sometimes_ must pay if you
want to use a web browser in _some_ situations. In the case of boa/lynx,
the server is 1/6 the overhead of the browser, and this figure is _higher_
for other browsers. Browsers without servers are sometimes possible, and
we should support them to the best of our ability _without_ugly_kludges_,
but we should acknowledge that we can't handle the documentation the way we
like across all browsers without a server.

It's OK to forego installing the web server if the user says they don't
want a web server for serving documentation. It's OK to not start the
web server until someone accesses its port, so that it isn't wasting
memory on systems where it isn't needed. However we should encourage
the user to install the server, and make it as secure as we can so that
it's not a problem. We should also make the web servers we do have
source for capable of translating local URLs to add .gz and reading our
compressed documents without a server, and we should depend on the server
for those browsers we don't have source for.

I don't understand why so many people are made all hot by this topic.

	Thanks

	Bruce
-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@pixar.com   510-215-3502
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