Subject: Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/databases
To: NetBSD Packages Technical Discussion List <tech-pkg@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Andrew Grillet <andrew@grillet.co.uk>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 04/26/2004 08:41:06
Hi,
<snip>
>
> There's nothing "special" about HTML documentation, or rather about
> the HTML parsing capability of browsers (and servers) that can read
> (and serve) HTML files -- those browsers (and servers) can also all
> read (and serve) many other file formats as well, not just HTML
> files.
>
>
> Unix-style manual pages are segregated for historical reasons (and to
> make indexing and accessing them with "man" somewhat easier).
>
> Info files are segregated because they're one special output format
> generated from a source file that can also be used to generate
> ordinary text files or typeset output suitable for printing. Info
> files are also not normally viewable by common "web browsers".
>
So what is really needed is a tool to convert man pages to html, and
insert them into /usr/local/share/doc. as part of the install process.
You can then set
HTMLMAN="yes"
in make.conf, and be happy, or dont set it and be BOF ;-)
Of course new docs for Unix specific stuff should continue being
produced in man format, as a Unix environment might lack any graphical
interface, but where it has, HTML integrates better, and
auto-conversion cant be rocket science. HTML is definitely best for
cross platform.
Perrrsonally, I would go for an INFO to HTML autoconversion - I'm hardly
ever able to find _and_ view info format docs.
Andrew