Re: Bits from the Lintian maintainers
Hi lintian maintainers!
[I decided not to respect the Reply-To: d-d and instead contact you directly.]
2010/1/2 Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>:
> We're also looking for someone who would like to tackle converting the
> Lintian manual to Docbook instead of DebianDoc-SGML and working on
> updates. There's quite a bit about Lintian that isn't currently
> documented. If you're interested, let us know.
I'm interested in helping out with this. Having cloned the git repo
and looked into the stuff in doc/, I have some initial observations
and results and some questions to follow:
With at least debiandoc-sgml, docbook-utils, docbook-xsl, and lynx
installed, the following gives a good start:
$cd doc
$debiandoc2docbookxml lintian.sgml
In the resulting file lintian.docbookxml, remove three or four lines
relating to the pretty-much-empty chapter "Top". It is now possible to
execute
$docbook2html lintian.docbookxml
and, similarly,
$docbook2txt lintian.docbookxml
This gives html and text versions pretty much as in debian/rules. Not
exactly, though. There are some formatting differences and, more
importantly, the abstract/copyright/authors information has
disappeared in the sgml -> docbookxml process. Anyway, this could be a
starting point for a more thorough, manual walk-through. So...
Am I correct in assuming doc/lintian.sgml and only that file is what
is referred to in Russ' call for help above?
Since the toolchain is different, I'm guessing aesthetically different
output is ok when comparing pre-conversion rendering with
post-conversion rendering. That is, the aim is to convert the
contents/semantics and leave the differences in the rendered output.
(Surely there's a reason newer software produces different rendering.
:) )
Would it be ok for me to "reserve" this work for myself, so that
duplicate work is avoided? Would a couple of weeks be ok? I've got a
life ;) but could do this on spare hours here and there.
Does a final lintian.docbookxml suffice, or would you prefer the
result of an automated conversion followed by a series of patches? I'd
use some VCS anyway, but if individual patches are favoured I'll try
harder to keep them clean. :)
Take care,
Martin
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