Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 03:35:55 +0000 From: bryanh@giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson) To: cswiger@mac.com Cc: ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: netpbm-Port Message-ID: <E19dM2F-00023X-00@giraffe.giraffe-data.com> In-Reply-To: <3F158EF8.90409@mac.com> (cswiger@mac.com) References: <20030716150546.GD1239@mails.so.argh.org> <3F158EF8.90409@mac.com>
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>In particular, [hpcdtoppm], mentioned in
>docs/COPYRIGHT.PATENT:
>...
>violates the Open Source Definition, and should be brought to the attention
>of the maintainer for replacement or removal.
Thanks for including me on this email (I am the maintainer of Netpbm). I
didn't know Sourceforge was so restrictive. I'll replace that program with
a reference to some other place to download it. But first I will see if
the author is interested in freeing up the program. In the 9 years since
he distributed it with the "no selling" restriction, a lot has changed.
>I don't regard HTML as an adequate replacement for manpages, either.
>Telling someone to go to an URL doesn't help one bit if they have a
>standalone system without net connectivity.
Two comments:
1) You bring up two only barely related issues: a) the documentation
is HTML; and b) when you type 'man' you get told to go to a URL
on the Internet (I call those man pages "pointer man pages").
2) I don't consider the pointer man pages installation adequate
either, and that's certainly not the way I would install it.
When I type 'man jpegtopnm', I get the documentation of Jpegtopnm
typed out on my terminal, whether I'm connected to the Internet
or not. But I do hear more often than I like from people who
think I expect them to go browse the web to find Netpbm
documentation, so I have been making minor adjustments to the
documentation and installation tools in recent releases to try to
make the other options for documentation more accessible to
people.
>if Bryan doesn't want to maintain manpages, fine: either someone
>else needs to step up and do so, or else it won't be done.
Right, and I'll cooperate any way I can that doesn't require me to do
a substantial amount of additional clerical work, or give up
distributing HTML or publishing the docs on the Web. (As it stands,
the Netpbm documentation effort for me is 99% writing and 1%
distribution overhead, which is how I like it).
> - inconsistent interface
That's something I would love to work on (or better yet, get code from
someone for). Unless you mean resolving never to improve one program
without making the same improvement to the other 200 programs at the
same time. I suspect much of the inconsistency referred to here came
about that way.
--
Bryan Henderson Phone 408-621-2000
San Jose, California
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