Re: knowledge base/docs site?

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Gene Heskett">

> Just one problem with Docbook stuff Jeff.  In RedHat, including 8.0, 
> there is apparently no known method to actually read a docbook file 
> without also haveing to wade thru paragraphs of formatting codes, 
> it looks like fubared html to me when I try to read it with less or 
> vi.

Reading raw Docbook is totally uninteresting. It will be converted to HTML,
text, RTF, PDF, whatever.

> So as far as I'm concerned, docbook is a useless format

Ahr, tell that to the entire GNOME Documentation Project!

> and will continue to be so until a reader thats possibly even an editor
> too is as easy to use as the man/info readers are becomes part of the
> linux standard install.

Holy shit! What is Yelp? Dude! It is a man/info/Docbook integrated help
system! Who'da thunk it? It renders all of these formats to a format that
gtkhtml can render (HTML).

> Apparently it is not a universal format AFA Red Hat is concerned.  I had
> it install everything the last couple of times.

Red Hat docs are written in Docbook too.

> When I've asked on the mailing lists I'm on about a docbook file 
> reader, the general response has been 'shrug' rather than telling 
> me what package I need to install to be able to read and or print 
> such files.  Either its so darned simple its ridiculous & I can't 
> see the tree for all the forest, or too complicated for RedHat or 
> kde to actually put one in the menus.
> 
> I've about give up asking "so how DO you read a docbook file?" & 
> "whats its dot extension?" because the answers have not been 
> forthcoming so far.

vi, dude. Emacs. gedit. Docbook is a documentation SOURCE format.

> So how does a redhat user actually go about reading a docbook file, 
> complete and properly formatted as the author intended for it to be 
> seen/printed?

There's your problem - when someone authors Docbook, they did not intend any
formatting whatsoever. They wrote semantically. Other software turns it into
'stuff for users'.

> Is there a common directory location or a $MANPATH like variable to setup
> so that the reader will automaticly search the likely places where they
> may be put by the "make install" routines in the makefiles?

No.

- Jeff

-- 
   "Anyone getting 1 Gigabit/sec for $20 is tele-commuting from the year    
                           2217..." - Paul Haddon