RE: [blt] how do you tar a set of files for a package

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pac1@tiac.net [mailto:pac1@tiac.net]
> Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 6:20 PM
> To: David Lawyer; ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org; basiclinux@topica.com
> Subject: Re: [blt] how do you tar a set of files for a package
> 
> David Lawyer wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 07:33:57AM -0400, pac1@tiac.net wrote:
> > snip
> > > Frequently Executed Commands for a package
> > >snip
> > > Frequently Used Flags
> > >snip
> 
> > I think this belongs embedded in the command itself.  For tar it's
> > "tar --help" snip "tar -h" might mean short help (
> 
> snip
> 
> > This is a small part of the
> > big task of integrating Linux documentation and the group that was
> > working on this topic fell apart.  Most of the man pages 
> are supplied
> > with the software and are not done by LDP, but we need to 
> be concerned
> > about them.
> > --                      David Lawyer
> 
> The format and presentation of information about a software 
> package is or should
> be absolutely separate from the structure of the  information 
> itself.  If the
> information is stored in a "proper" way, the various formats 
> such as -h --help
> you suggest would be extractable subsets.  So would complete 
> man pages, info
> pages, doc-book howtos doc-book manuals  parts of faqs and 
> fecs  (frequently
> executed commands)  and any other sort of documentation view 
> you can dream up.

I agree.  However, the documentation for all of the GNU packages (basically
most of the ones that you use at the command line) are all done my GNU.
They don't use DocBook, they use TexInfo.  

> 
> The point is to have documentation sources that can be 
> processed by a program to
> produce ANY format of documentation desired.  What this 
> format should be is
> something that needs work.  I don't believe it exists yet.

I think that it's partly there.  DocBook has most of this, and can probably
do all of it, it just needs more people writing tools for it.  

> Some questions:
> 
> Is XML a good tool for modeling the structure of data?  Is 
> SGML?  

They're both good.  They are quite similar, with one being seen as being
more modern, and getting more media attention.

> Is doc-book
> the definitive data type definition for documentation?  Is 
> Doc-Book future
> version 2? future version 3?  Who's working on the next steps?

Yes, I think so, and so does Norm Walsh, the GNOME documentation project,
the freeBSD doc project, and a whole bunch of others.  The people who are
working on generic XML projects are also helping with tools for DocBook (4.0
will be SGML and XML).  DocBook is now in version 3.1, with 4.0 well on the
way.  There are already plans for 5.0.  The evolution of DocBook is very
well managed, although I don't think there are enough developing tools that
can be used with it.  There certainly aren't enough that are complete enough
to be used.  As for the people who are in-charge of DocBook, check out
www.oasis-open.org and www.nwalsh.com.
	Greg


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