On Tue, Mar 16, 1999 at 10:36:43AM -0500, MallarJ@aol.com wrote: > I have to admit, there is a bit of truth to this, alot of people just don't > have the time to read 18 different documents in 18 different locations. Man > pages, info pages, FAQs, HOWTOs, mini-HOWTOs, READMEs, INSTALL docs, package > descriptions... it is a bit daunting. I do feel that anyone installing > anything shoud be up for some reading, but just how much reading is the > question. I'm not even going to think about complaining about the amount of > documentation, coming from systems that have zip, I know from experience how > helpful good documentation can be. But I wonder if maybe there is a better > way to organize the volumunous information given to us in a standard, easy to > use, heirarchial fashion. Well, ultimately, this is what programs like dhelp are designed to do. But we have a long road ahead of us. There are *at least* six major file formats used for documentation already. 1) plain text 2) man pages (and other nroff sources, like the X books) 3) HTML 4) info/TeXinfo 5) TeX/LaTeX 6) Raw PostScript I doubt anyone writes docs in straight PostScript by hand, but I think there are cases where we don't have the source document that was used to create the PS document. Also, I left out SGML because *I think* we always provide SGML-based documentation in some kind of post-processed format. To systematize all these manners of documentation would be a gargantuan task. -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | // // // / / branden@ecn.purdue.edu | EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
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