Re: knowledge base/docs site?

[Gene Heskett <gene_heskett iolinc net>]

On Thursday 02 January 2003 02:40, Michael Hunt wrote:
>On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 14:10, Jeff Waugh wrote:
>> > > PHP and (perhaps especially) MySQL are very shithouse
>> > > answers to "Docbook gratefully accepted". :-)
>
>To which Pat Suwalski wrote:
>> > Perhaps, but I don't know DocBook. I know PHP and MySQL.
>> >
>> > Also, wouldn't DocBook require GNOME to be compiled already?
>> > Unless they have 1.2 or whatever comes with the distro,
>> > there's the chicken-egg problem. A web interface IS more
>> > accessible.
>
>And Jeff's humourous comeback was:
>> There is no chicken and egg problem. The documentation would be
>> published on the website. It would be written in Docbook.
>>
>>   [ When I was smaller and cuter than I am today (many moons
>> ago), a major drug and sex education programme used the tagline,
>> "It's okay to say NO!", illustrating that it was okay for little
>> girls to say "no" to strangers offering lollypops; it was okay
>> for teenagers to say "no" to their friends telling them to scull
>> bourbon [1]; and it was okay for parents to say "no" to kids
>> wanting to experiment with foreign herbs and nudity in the
>> living room. This brilliant tagline has so many applications...
>> "PHP/MySQL: It's OKAY to say NO!" :-) ]
>>
>> - Jeff
>>
>> [1] Christ almighty! Next they'll be peer-pressuring us into
>> sculling our own urine.
>
>Jeff, I appreciate your humour but I don't think Pat knows where
> you are coming from.
>
>Pat. Jeff explained why he wanted to use doc book when he replied
> to the original post on wiki :-
>
>'Thanks, but no, not a Wiki. I've said many times that Docbook
>documentation will be gratefully accepted (as it's easy to work
> with, easy to add to, easy to maintain, etc).'

And to which I replied negatively as its not a universally accepted 
format, at least not to red hat users.  Then this post actually 
tries to give some usefull information, thank you Michael.

>Some pointers to docbook websites and why Jeff [1] might think it
> is the best soloution for the problem are listed below:-
>
>The offical DocBook site
>
>http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/

The link works, but provides no resources readily useable by the 
novice.  I didn't see a suitable entry to click on so I didn't try 
any sub entries from what is a mostly index of content page.

>The DocBook.org website, home of the DocBook: The Definitive Guide
> book.
>
>http://www.docbook.org/

Which dies complaining about a missing 'file' on my system, showing 
only a blank page.

>A tutorial
>
>http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro/docbook-intr
>o.html
This one works too, and I'm now click the link to UNIX versions.  
Unforch, clicking on the unix link near the bottom of the page also 
gets me nothing but a 3 line missing 'file' popup advisory.

This is essentially the same response as for #2, so the next Q then 
is do I have mozilla 1.01 miss-configured?  If thats the case, how 
is that to be fixed?

>Michael Hunt
>
>[1] I have to say that this is IMHO (in my humble opinion) but
> seems to fit in with waht Jeff has said.

I repeat, if I can't use it like a manpage, of what earthly use is 
it?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP 1400mhz  512M
99.21% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly