From owner-freebsd-doc Mon Mar 10 20:52:45 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD3B437B401; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:52:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from HAL9000.homeunix.com (12-233-57-224.client.attbi.com [12.233.57.224]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C634E43FB1; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:52:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.org) Received: from HAL9000.homeunix.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by HAL9000.homeunix.com (8.12.6/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h2B4qdIX004403; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:52:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.org) Received: (from das@localhost) by HAL9000.homeunix.com (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id h2B4qdPn004402; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:52:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from das@FreeBSD.org) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:52:39 -0800 From: David Schultz To: Sean Chittenden Cc: "M. Warner Losh" , doc@FreeBSD.org, trhodes@FreeBSD.org, dwmalone@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: your mail Message-ID: <20030311045239.GA4369@HAL9000.homeunix.com> References: <20030310195323.GA2812@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <20030310204035.GU79234@perrin.int.nxad.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030310204035.GU79234@perrin.int.nxad.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Thus spake Sean Chittenden : > > Very cool. I think it might be a better idea to move the > > centralized list to the handbook, since hypertext is a better medium > > for a list that will potentially be very long and contain many > > cross-references. Short descriptions next to MIBs would be nice. > > Also, sorting first by category and then by alphabetical order might > > be more helpful. > > ::shakes head violently in disagreement:: > > NOOOOOOOOO!!!! :-P While I agree with you on the technological front > regarding hyper-links, the whole point of having this in a man page is > to be able to help the admin that's up late at night trying to figure > out why a certain value is set to what and where to change it in the > config. If we'd like to have this in the handbook, so be it, but I > think the primary effort should be in mdoc for usability and ease of > use (unless of course the mdoc sources are built from DocBook: see > earlier post on the topic). -sc Actually, I was thinking of the fact that properly laid out DocBook can be converted into a (slightly more concise) mdoc file. I have nothing against a manpage listing all of the sysctls, but I think that centralizing the information in an SGML-based format would be much more useful in the long run. And since you can make a manpage out of that, the only disadvantage I see is the extra work to put together the DocBook stuff and figure out how to do the conversion. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message