From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Mar 25 08:36:06 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id IAA25689 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 25 Mar 1995 08:36:06 -0800 Received: from UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU (root@UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU [129.7.1.11]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id IAA25683 for ; Sat, 25 Mar 1995 08:35:59 -0800 Received: from Taronga.COM by UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU with UUCP id AA04976 (5.67a/IDA-1.5); Sat, 25 Mar 1995 10:32:37 -0600 Received: by bonkers.taronga.com (smail2.5p) id AA21975; 25 Mar 95 10:25:22 CST (Sat) Received: (from peter@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id KAA21971; Sat, 25 Mar 1995 10:25:21 -0600 From: Peter da Silva Message-Id: <199503251625.KAA21971@bonkers.taronga.com> Subject: Re: httpd as part of the system. To: kelly@fsl.noaa.gov (Sean Kelly) Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 10:25:21 -0600 (CST) Cc: fbsd@clem.systemsix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <9503251535.AA11504@junco.fsl.noaa.gov> from "Sean Kelly" at Mar 25, 95 08:35:31 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1117 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Steve> lynx/mosaic are appropriate for the new sgml/html based doc > Steve> tree even without internet connection. > However, it might make more sense to make our docs texinfo-based. Please, no. Emacs and the info browser are not tools to proud of in a user friendly system. They're hard to learn, hard to integrate new text into, complex to configure and maintain, and not very versatile. The current direction, using Linuxdoc and converting from there to TeX or Info or HTML, is much better. The HTML browsers are easier to use (I'm always getting lost in info) and don't require a complex directory and file structure to access the docs (you can use lynx or mosaic or chimera or phoenix or whatever on any file). And with an httpd server, you can dynamically import any documents. Look at http://bonkers.neosoft.com/cgi-bin/ranger-list and ranger-search for an example... that's a newsgroup exported to the world wide web. Doing the same thing with man pages is just as easy. (I use texi2html for converting info documents myself, but give the users a user-friendly interface like lynx by default)