From owner-freebsd-doc Wed May 24 13: 2:11 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D20737BD71 for ; Wed, 24 May 2000 13:01:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: from kilt.nothing-going-on.org (kilt.nothing-going-on.org [192.168.1.18]) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA89770; Wed, 24 May 2000 20:00:04 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik@catkin.nothing-going-on.org) Received: (from nik@localhost) by kilt.nothing-going-on.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA08646; Wed, 24 May 2000 08:48:50 GMT (envelope-from nik@catkin.nothing-going-on.org) Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 08:48:50 +0000 From: Nik Clayton To: Mark Ovens Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why no Master Index? Message-ID: <20000524084850.A8565@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> References: <20000523194307.C233@parish> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <20000523194307.C233@parish>; from mark@ukug.uk.freebsd.org on Tue, May 23, 2000 at 07:43:07PM +0100 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 07:43:07PM +0100, Mark Ovens wrote: > Is there a reason why there is no Master Index/TOC for the FreeBSD > docs? This > < much time. This > < many things to do. :-) > IMHO it would make sense to have a single point of entry into > the documentation set. The handbook and FAQ are the high profile docs > but the rest, especially the articles, are somewhat hidden from view > being referenced from the handbook and FAQ and pointed to people in > replies to questions. Couldn't agree more. [snip] Your example looked good. Do you want to turn that in to HTML (based on the existing contents of www/en), and we can go from there. You might want to take a look at http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html, and try trimming that down. One way to do it would be to split things in two based on whether or not they're maintained by the project. So have a docs/index.html that offers the reader links to the two files, and an 'internal.html' that lists the project maintained docs, and an 'external.html' that lists the other stuff ('internal' and 'external' are crap names, please, come up with better ones :-) ) I also wouldn't mind seeing a translation table that listed all the docs, and an indication of whether or not they've been translated. . . en es fr ja ru zh Handbook x x x FAQ x x x x x x FDP Primer x Porter's Handbook x x [...] This would be a separate page. > As Nik has just suggested having the docs as a package to be installed > by sysinstall it would seem sensible to have something like this. In > fact I would go so far as to suggest that sysinstall automatically > installed a browser with the docs index as it's Home Page. Having the > docs "in your face" doesn't seem to be inappropriate for new users. Ye-es. Go through the archives and you'll find an effort by Andrew Boothman to create a process that would create and maintain an HTML index of all the documentation installed by ports/packages on a particular system (subject line was "Automatic documentation index"). Since I want to start encouraging people to treat our docs in exactly the same way we should (IMHO) leverage that work. Then sysinstall doesn't have to do anything new. N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message