discuss: Re: Very outdated document: The TrueType Fonts in Debian mini-HOWTO
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Fwd: Very outdated document: The TrueType Fonts in
Debian mini-HOWTO
From:
David Greaves ####@####.####
Date:
29 May 2008 23:39:55 +0100
Message-Id: <483F323F.1090906@dgreaves.com>
David Lawyer wrote:
> on the Internet. For every HOWTO there could be a metadata file with
> a certain format with headings searchable using grep. Editing could
> use vim and it's possible to change all the files at once using argdo
> and the substitute command. Each line of the metadata file would
> have a heading which could be found using grep.
>
> This is pretty weak and crude. What would be better that could be
> done quickly and could later be read into a future database CMS?
> Shell scrips could be written to extract info. Another problem is
> that there would be no audit trail of who modified what and when they
> did it.
All good - and frankly this could be done fairly easily on a page on the new wiki.
Establish a few lines of boilerplate with
HOWTO Name :
HOWTO URL :
ACTION :
Notes :
Notes :
Editor Name :
Publish Date : DD MM YYYY
Review1 Date : DD MM YYYY
Review1 Reviewers Name :
Review Due : DD MM YYYY
Expiry Due : DD MM YYYY
etc
and anyone with a minimal knowledge of text processing can grab the page and
process it.
So equally crude but has the advantage that it could be done right now.
>> I just can't see a rational reason to keep serving up a document
>> that you *know* is going to cause some confusion or worse? Why?
>
> The rational reason for many thousands (about .1 million if the
> mirrors are included) of out-of-date LDP docs on the Internet
> (includes old versions) is that other sites don't properly maintain
> the docs on their sites and neither do we due to lack of volunteers.
> It's been this way for over a decade but it's getting worse.
Again - I am not criticising LDP for having/serving out-of-date information per
se. As you say, it's volunteer maintenance and no-one else seems to have cracked
it either.
No; my 'complaint' is that the LDP, once it KNOWS that a HOWTO is outdated and
that there is a better information source STILL hasn't done anything after 3
very polite requests and 2+ weeks of, erm, motivational speaking? [I may be
being a pain in the arse but at least I seem to have stirred up some much needed
activity :) ]
LDP is also in the position of being very highly ranked indeed for a lot of
Google searches - so whilst other sites are having equally challenging problems
managing their data, the LDP is the first one that many seekers of the truth
will stumble across... and so it's the main one that I am trying to influence.
David
