Gone HOWTOs (was: Re: HAM-HOWTO)

[David Lawyer <dave@lafn.org>]

> On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, David Lawyer wrote:
> 
> > [Regarding people looking in vain for a HOWTO that no longer exists]
> 
> > Suppose that if a HOWTO ceases to really exist at LDP (or becomes
> > unmaintained), a null HOWT0 is created to "replace" it.  For example
> > Foo-HOWT0 will be a file which contains an explanation of what
> > happened to Foo-HOWTO.  There would be Foo-HOWT0.sgml and all the
> > other formats.  The HOWTO-INDEX would call it a null HOWT0 (or a
> > better term).  A problem might be that someone will report "HOWT0" as
> > a typo.  Another way would be to name them HOWTO~ but I think HOWT0 is
> > better since it's not really a HOWTO.  After several years a null HOWT0
> > could be moved to an archive. 

On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 02:56:17AM -0700, der.hans wrote:
> 
> Cool idea! How about, though, instead making it one file and having each
> of the null docs point to that one file? For html they can point to the
> appropriate place in the doc. This puts all of these exceptions in one
> place so it's easier to maintain and less likely that we forget about
> something or just leave it dangling.
> 
It's a lot easier for people looking for something not to have another
stage of indirection (the links), especially for text HOWT0s.  Why not
have the info directly in each HOWT0 as I suggested but then use a
script once in a while to dump the contents of every HOWT0 into a
single HOWT0s_all file?  Such a file would mainly be of interest to
the LDP site maintainers.

Perhaps there could be some format for HOWT0s.  It's important to show
the date it was removed.  Perhaps this should be in the <date> field
to make it easy to extract such dates.  Also, for some HOWT0s, a short
explanation of the name is needed, especially where the name is a
model or brand name of hardware that is becoming obsolete.  Example:
Boca mini-HOWTO was about Boca multiport serial cards.  Even today
many people have no idea what it means if all they see is the name
"Boca".  To be expedient one could just dump the abstract of the "gone" 
HOWTO into the HOWT0 file but this would make the HOWT0_all file
longer.
-- 
			David Lawyer


--  
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org