Re: knowledge base/docs site?

[Gene Heskett <gene_heskett iolinc net>]

On Thursday 02 January 2003 12:27, Jeff Waugh wrote:
><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).

Yelp?  Thats what I do when I hit my thumb with a hammer.  Usually 
followed by carefully selected bits and pieces of a 15 minute 
non-repeating profanity monologue I once heard.  :-)

Yelp?  Never heard of it.  Humm, locate shows a bunch of stuff.  
I'll be dipped!  A quick survey of the menu's says its about half 
there, but nothing from the qt or kde campsites are included it 
appears, and I don't run gnome.  But as you say, all the gnome 
project appears to be there, and now that I can find gnome help, I 
might just play a bit.

Dumb Q:  Whyinhell isn't it on the popup menu?

The last time I started gnome and started trying to set it up and 
actually do something with it, the kickpanel at the bottom of the 
screen disappeared after trying to add the second button and even a 
re-install wouldn't bring it back.  The only way I could get a 
shell was to ctrl-alt-bkspc out of x.  That and its constant 
nagging because I run as root 99% of the time tends to give me a 
bad impression.  Heck, I even tried evolution a couple of months 
ago because everyone was raving about how good it was, but I gave 
up when it became obvious it had no facilities to deal with a pop 
server, only imap was supported, and out here in dear old West by 
God Virginia, USA, pop3 still rules.  And that leaves kmail, all 
the rest are just wannabees for one reason or the other.

Honestly, this is the first I've ever heard of yelp, and it opens 
quite a few doors, thank you very much Jeff for some real meat and 
potatoes help.  I appreciate it.

>> 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.

Yup, thats what I hear, but I've never been able to read any of it 
and make sense out of it with all the markup insertions.

>> 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.

Is gedit stable yet?  I like its look and feel but it keeps going 
away on me, and I have to run kpm to kill the dead process.  With 
all my work gone everytime, that gets a wee bit old.  Vi, or vim, 
even gvim just simply work.  Emacs?  I hear its got a decent 
operating system :-) but the editor is so different from vi, or 
cygnused (aka ced on the amiga, IMNSHO thats how real editors 
should work), that I don't know if this old dog can learn that in a 
reasonable time.  I knew vi from way back, so the modern version 
seemed like a piece of cake even if I did fall in love with ced.

>> 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'.

Define 'semantically' please.  Or point me to readable links of the 
definitions.  Mmm, maybe that won't work, the links someone else 
gave me to the main docbook sites apparently didn't translate too 
well, any click on a link once at the site with mozilla 1.01 gets a 
requester that "file" so and so can't be found.   If that 
translation is a mozilla configurable item, I haven't found it yet.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP 1400mhz  512M
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