Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 58376
Few general (and maybe stupid...) remarks on the documentations present on RedHat Linux
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:39:01 EDT
Why not only one format for the HOWTOs? (now ithere are 2 formats: docbook and sgml) Why should it be either .html, or .docbook or .sgml? for the doc on RH Linux? There are many converting tools so why not furnish all the doc in only one format, the richest one and then add a README file explaining how to produce the other formats (.ps, .pdf, .txt, .html...) from that format. linuxdoc allows to specify the format and the size of any "ready to print" generated document from a .sgml. They look really good and are easy to read. docbook2ps produces documents that are not so "good looking" and it is impossible to easily specify the size of the paper (or I have not found the option...). Isn't it possible to federate everything, to have one format (.sgml or .docbook) and one very good looking template for everything, to obtain coherent documentations (in term of appearance)? That would make things so much easier.... So much professional... In the same idea, info, html and man pages.... I like man pages, I don't like info pages. man is easy to type and use on a console. info and .html requires too many CTRL something... But this is MY opinion. I know some people have others. I simply go to the simplicity, I am lazy and to type man is fast and simple.... They are many tools able to produce any of these format from a META file (.xml, .sgml whatever) but not so many people know who they are, what they are supposed to do and how to use them cleverly (and I am one of these people...). Couldn't it be possible to have the 3 formats present in every RedHat packages and placed where they are supposed to be easily found? That would make everybody happy and would put some coherence (I hate to say "Jesus X, where is the doc and in which format.!!!!") Daniel
The HOWTOs on the Red Hat Linux Documentation CD are from the Linux Documentation Project (LDP), a community organization. We just mirror the latest content in case users want additional documentation. The LDP is in charge of deciding which formats they accept, and they accept multiple formats. I can't change that. We are working to make the man pages and info pages easier to access.