discuss: Use for mini-HOWTOs (was: revival of the weekly news)
Subject:
Re: Use for mini-HOWTOs (was: revival of the weekly news)
From:
Stein Gjoen ####@####.####
Date:
23 Apr 2003 21:33:26 -0000
Message-Id: <3EA5B1E9.9060500@mail.nyx.net>
David Lawyer wrote:
[snip]
> In some cases where HOWTOs cover the same ground, they need to be
> merged. But in many cases it's better not to merge but have an overview
> HOWTO supported by a number of mini-HOWTOs for special situations. For
> example: a mini-HOWTO about Linux support for certain brands of
> hardware (printers, modems); how to do something using a particular
> distribution. The overview HOWTO needs to point to the minis that
> support it and conversely. Thus the general principles are elucidated
> the the overview HOWTO and don't need repeating in the supporting minis.
> Thus a beginner needs to first read the overview HOWTO and then the
> appropriate supporting mini while an expert could just read the
> appropriate supporting HOWTO. Of course our database would need to map
> these supporting howtos (child) to the overview (parent) howto.
I agree a lot of (mini-)HOWTOs could be merged, the variouos
Linux plus foreign OS-HOWTOs seem numerous and like a good
collection candicate.
In designing a system with supporting HOWTOs we should make
navigation simple, preferrably not more than 2 levels deep.
> It would be nice if the author of the overview howto could review the
> supporting child howtos. In some cases, "supporting" HOWTOs could be
This might be a good way of getting more reviewers but might
also be seen as a pressure. My Multi Disk HOWTO refers to a large
number of other HOWTOs but I do not have the capacity to review
updates of these regularly.
> regular long HOWTOs. For example, a network HOWTO could have long
> "supporting" HOWTOs on various types of networks. Does anyone have a
> better name than "supporting"? It has sort of an inferior connotation
> to it, especially if the supporting HOWTO is longer and took more work
> to create than it's overview (parent) HOWTO. It's a tree structure
> where overview HOWTOs could be (at the same time) supporting HOWTOs for
> a still more general HOWTO>
Can you propose a way of letting our readers navigate these with
ease? Perhaps this is a hobby horse of mine but I feel this is
an important issue that is not entirely trivial.
And will the idea of "Application Notes" be used/useful here
or entirely subsumed by the tree structure itself?
> I would also like to suggest (I'm sort of ambivalent on this) the we
> permit mini-HOWTOs to be in plain text, provided that they have a table
> of contents and are not too long. They would fit into the html package
> as .txt documents. I guess they could be put into the other formats we
> generate.
I had hoped the distinction could go away, again to make navigation
simple. Writing a large supporting/mini-HOWTO in plain text could
be counterproductive when it grows beyond a few pages and revisions
are needed.
Regards,
Stein Gjoen
