[ode] Re: Document Formats


Wade Hampton (whampton@staffnet.com)
Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:06:56 -0500


Sandy Harris wrote:
>
> Guylhem Aznar wrote:
>
> > Once we agree on a documentation format, no doubt we will
> > improve/recode the tools.
>
> Methinks it is pointless to attempt to "agree on a documentation
> format" if by that you mean an authoring format. Certainly there
> is a lot of documentation out there in various formats, and you
> can make a case for using several input formats:
>
> man:
> Texinfo:
> Linuxdoc, Debian, ...:
> SGML DocBook:
> XML DocBook:
> So I don't think we should be trying to agree on an input format. If
> a consensus arises as tools evolve and experience accumulates, fine.
> If particular projects want to limit themselves to a single format --
> DocBook for OSWG, Texinfo for GNU, ... -- that's fine too.
If I may reiterate what I earlier posted, I think we should have
a recommended format, but accept and be able to process others --
kind of a family of acceptible docs. My long posting of several
days ago mentioned how such a scheme could be developed to index,
track, and maintain documents of multiple types.

Open Source is not one dimensional. It is not just Linux. It
includes Windows, Mac, BSD, OS/2, Be, other UNIX, etc. Documents
are not one-dimensional, one size fits all.

I for one, often first look to the man page for the short,
concise description of what I am looking for, then to the howto,
then to /usr/doc, then to the kernel, then to the Internet....

We need to define our requirements and, as Kim posted, our
scope first.

Cheers,

-- 
W. Wade, Hampton  <whampton@staffnet.com>  
Support:  Linux Knowledge Base Organization  http://linuxkb.org/
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