On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Al Woodhull wrote:
> Maybe I missed something along the way, could you provide information or a
> pointer to information about the proposed redefinition of the HOWTO
> format? Perhaps someone else will be willing to take up the conversion or
> re-creation of a conforming Ham-HOWTO.
Yes, I think you, and just about everybody has completely missed my point.
It isn't a new definition, it is the existing definition that it doesn't
conform to. The HAM-HOWTO was an LDP "hack" from the start, I chose the LDP
document distribution mechanism precisely for the reasons you cite, but up
till this point the LDP has been fairly informal and hasn't made any
serious attempt to enforce document standards beyond the requirement that
HOWTO documents be marked up in the LinuxDoc DTD. I see strong enough signs
that this is changing to consider alternatives now.
I can't point you to any public references to changes in the organisation
and architecture of the LDP, because there are none. We don't have a public
face beyond the LDP home site. The discussions have been on the LDP mailing
list and amongst LDP authors.
> No, but the HAM-HOWTO is still in the directory on the CD-ROMs I have used
> and the ftp sites. And most of the books include a CD-ROM, although, never
> having purchased such a book I don't know how complete the CD-ROMs are.
What I'm suggesting doesn't negate the possibility of the proposed replacement
for the HAM-HOWTO also being distributed in a similiar manner, just not in the
same format. For example, Joop has already suggested the idea of distributing
the document/data in the common package formats .deb/.rpm etc. perhaps in
HTML format, perhaps in some searchable fashion.
> This is the "no-panacea" argument. Just because a method may not be the
Why spend very limited resources on doing something that I believe will
produce an inferior result compared to some alternative?
> I think everyone appreciates the work that you have done in the past on
> the HAM-HOWTO, and if you feel that doing it in the same way, or changing
> the way you do it to conform to new LDP requirements aren't things you
> want to do, that's fair. But I'd like to see this evolve into a discussion
> of how somebody else can continue the tradition, perhaps in a different
> way, and how that could complement the new directions you wish to explore.
What I'm trying to say is that there is no way that a catalog of software
can be converted to conform to the LDP definition of a HOWTO document.
When it comes to trying to find people to help, I've already tried that,
and received exactly one response, from Alan Crosswell, who is primarily
responsible for the new version.
Really, I think I made a mistake even trying to discuss it here.
I'll just do what I'm talking then handle discussion.
Terry
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