Hi, 

Thanks for dreaming, this is the kind of discussion we need to have! You wrote:
> 
> Uhm... what about shipping the current SolBook/SGML
> DTD and make all
> _new_ manual pages use DocBook/XML and pull-over the
> old (SolBook/SGML)
> ones incrementally when larger edits are needed ?

This is a good idea. Incremental changes to the structured markup of individual 
files for a source base as large as the SunOS man pages creates a lot of 
conditions for mistakes and breakage with packaging and publishing, so we need 
to consider that. There exist multiple SunOS man page gates containing 
thousands of files that are all active supporting Solaris base and update 
releases with bi-weekly builds, so I'm grappling with the volume and need help 
to figure out how to make forward progress without impact to our traditional 
responsibilities.

I think that the greater goals of 'use free tools, editable by vi or emacs, 
with standard templates' can be achieved with the man pages, but we have to  
develop a solution that really scales and leaves no room for errors when 
managing the man page gate, packages, HTML, and PDF delivery that Solaris users 
have come to expect.
> 
> [snip]
> > >What was the problem in the case of the japanese
> manual page ? Why
> > can
> > >you ship the nroff code but not the SolBook one ?
> > 
> > We are not shipping nroff for japanese ksh man page
> with CDDL, as far
> > as I know. We cannot license that content under
> CDDL for legal
> > reasons.
> 
> Who owns the copyright ? X/Open ?

I think so, I'd have to check, but there is a chunk of about 750 pages we will 
not be able to license and deliver for OpenSolaris. I have an old AI to get 
this list out to the community, so thanks for the reminder to do so.
> 
> > >My idea was to allow them droped-in as-is, e.g.
> without
> > modifications.
> > >Would that be possible, too ?
> > 
> > I can't be sure until we try, but I think it should
> work. DocBook
> > allows many more tags than SolBook, so that could
> cause some need for
> > modifications.
> 
> Well, it's better than trying to convince each
> OpenSource project on
> this planet to adopt SolBook/SGML... :-)

Right, I have not signed up for that! :) But, I've certainly had many 
conversations with community members who want the SolBook DTD and SolBook files 
to work on, rather than DocBook files generated from SolBook. I think, because 
it creates the path beyond the sponsorship model that requires a Sun person to 
integrate changes. The cost is learning curve, but if you know DocBook, you 
effectively know SolBook.
 Keep talking to me about this, because I need to understand how having SolBook 
XML man page files that can be validated and published with free tools creates 
a problem, because to me, this solves a huge number of problems I've been 
battling all year WRT collaboration. 
> 
> [snip]
> > >Finally:
> > >I have a patch for /etc/profile floating around
> which properly sets
> > >$MANPATH based on $PATH , including
> locale/language-specific manual
> > >pages.
> [snip]
> > >
> > >Is anyone interested to sponsor such a patch ?
> > 
> > Oh, this is a great wish list! Thank you so much, I
> will hunt down a
> > sponsor and get a conversation started about this
> patch.
> 
> I just filed the matching RFE at
> http://bugs.opensolaris.org/ ...
> sponsor request follows once I get the email from
> Linda Bernal that the
> bug has been filed. Note that this requires an ARC
> fasttrack case
> (CC:'ing Don Cragun <don.cragun at sun.com> (and hoping
> he'll volunteer to
> do the ARC fasttrack stuff (Don: See
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/docs-discuss/200
> 7-January/000687.html
> , anything below the "Finally:"-line... would you be
> intrested to
> sponsor such a fasttrack ?))).

Yes, I saw this from Linda yesterday, very cool!! Thanks so much for helping 
out and sharing your expertise and time on the documentation and strategy. It 
is so important and the man PATH problem has been a real thorn for us, so I 
can't emphasize enough how much your help to get a fix is appreciated, 

-Michelle

> 
> ----
> 
> Bye,
> Roland
> 
> -- 
>   __ .  . __
> o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org
> \__\/\/__/  MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix
>  programmer
>  /O /==\ O\  TEL +49 641 7950090
> (;O/ \/ \O;)
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