Re: documentation types

[Neil Roeth <neil@debian.org>]

On Feb 10, Hendrik Sattler (ubq7@stud.uni-karlsruhe.de) wrote:
 > Am Freitag, 10. Februar 2006 13:36 schrieb Neil Roeth:
 > > On Feb 10, Hendrik Sattler (post@hendrik-sattler.de) wrote:
 > >  > Hi,
 > >  >
 > >  > I about packaging a library that ships an API reference in docbook SGML
 > >  > and provides manual build targets for PDF, PS and HTML.
 > >  >
 > >  > Is there any preference on which type should be included in the -dev
 > >  > package? I would prefer PDF:
 > >  >  * one file only
 > >  >  * easy to print
 > >  >  * many viewers available
 > >  >
 > >  > I would rather not build all three as this is a definite waste of disk
 > >  > space.
 > >  >
 > >  > Suggestions are welcome...
 > >
 > > Could it be a configure option, so that the first time the package is
 > > installed it would ask which subset of the three to install (defaulting to
 > > PDF only), and later, when upgrading the package, it would install the same
 > > subset with no further interaction?
 > 
 > That would surely be possible with debconf but a Depends on docbook-utils and 
 > all its dependecies would be required.
 > Would it be acceptable for a package to tell in its README.Debian how to 
 > create the files? Then, docbook-utils could be a Suggests.

I was thinking that all three formats would be pregenerated and in the binary
package, and only the one(s) desired would be installed.  So, no need to
Depend on docbook-utils.  But, policy says HTML is preferred, so I guess this
is moot.

-- 
Neil Roeth