> Jim> /var/www for html files > > Christoph> /var/www is discouraged to be used by the webstandard. Do > Christoph> not use it unless you have documents that need to be > Christoph> modified on a regular basis. There are cases when putting symlinks into this directory is a good way of doing things. > What is the rationale behind this? And where do auto generated > files go? I think this is a defect in the webstandard, and needs to > be addressed. In my opinion the Web standard fails to address the > four cases I have detailed below. Auto generated files should go into /var/lib/<packagename> and a symlink to /var/www should be used. That's what dwww does for the auto-generated menu files and such. > Christoph> Use /usr/doc/<package> to store static HTML code and refer > Christoph> to it by using the URL > Christoph> http://<hostname>/doc/<package> > Christoph> Register the documentation with the menu package. > > This would be fine for documentation, but what about > non-documentation files? spescialy packages targeted towards > providing local Web services? I don't think the webstandard say that you can't put static files under /var/www. It's just that it's not appropriate to put "HTML documentation" under /var/www - that stuff should go into /usr/doc. It's much easier to find there if you're not using a web browser. Conversely, I don't think that non-documentation (but still static) items belong under /usr/doc. > cases: > 1) I have a modified MOMSpider that very configurably checks the > several local doc tree (it recognizes that different part of the > site have different maintainers, so one may configure the spider > appropriately). It generates mail messages, and lots of reports, > which should be visible from my server. > If I package this, where do the reports go? /var/lib/<packagename> - and use a symlink in /var/www > 2) I have a common log format gopher/ftp/http log digester that > generates a nice povray image of server statistics. Where do the > gif files go? /var/lib/<packagename> - and use a symlink in /var/www > 3) LaTeX2HTML converted documents have traditionally refered to > the relative URL /usr/lib/latex2html/icons/X.gif. This worls > fine for the base url file:// (when viewing the files directly > using lynx/netscape/w3, but if this is to be visible from my > sever, I need to create the directory > <Document Root>/usr/lib/latex2html/icons/ > and populate this with a forest of links. That's sort of weird - I'd try to modify LatTeX2HTML to refer to the links as being in <Document Root>/latex2html/icons/ and just have a single symlink under /var/www to /usr/lib/latex2html > 4) I have written a HTML validation package, that consists fo a > Perl CGI-script, which puts up a form where users can type in > HTML snippets or URL's to full documents, the output is a > rendered image of the document, with line numbers added, the > output os nsgmls, a list of all HTML keywords found, with > pointer to a detailed description (actually, the DTD is parsed > into a tree, and all leaf nodes are described, so one may view > other grammatical details). > > All these files maybe periodically updated whenever new DTD > files become available; I don't think these files should pollute > the doc heirarchy, since they are not documentation. Do the same things again. If it's not documentation - I don't really want to see it under /use/doc. Contrary to popular belief, I still read documentation by cd'ing into /usr/doc/<packagename> and by looking at files using "less". Having non-documentation is messy, IMHO. Case-in-point: /usr/doc/info2www - those .gif files aren't documentation. > IMHO it is time we nailed down a document root, and recommend > that packages use that for local files/data. Jim said that he uses > /var/www for the sytem provided files, and uses /var/something for > his other servers; I think that might be a good place to start. > > manoj As long as the user has the option of using a different directory for their document root (they do have this option), I think that the /var/www directory is the "property" of the debian www packages. The only issue is how to do it cleanly. If we use some self-control and only put small items like symlinks into /var/www, I think things will stay neat and understandable. Also, I personally think that packages such as dwww, info2www and other cgi-based packages should be able to function even if the <document root>/doc symlink isn't there. That symlink should just be there as a convenience for accessing documentation. It's not even necessary if someone chooses to view the docs via dwww. That's my perspective anyways. :-) Cheers, - Jim
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