What do I do with tarballs?

[Stefan Langerman <lfalse@paul.rutgers.edu>]

Hi,

dselect is great, but what do I do when there is no deb package for the
soft I want? I know of course how to install somethng from a tarball, my
question is just: where do I do it? Where do I put the package etc. and
make sure I am not messing up dpkg? Are there any conventions for that?
Is there any doc that explains that?

Thanks a lot,

Stefan.