Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 13:20:51 -0500 (EST) From: jfieber@cs.smith.edu (John Fieber) To: james@hermes.cybernetics.net (James Robinson) Cc: antwerp@whisker.hubbard.ie, doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Do you want some help with the FreeBSD docs? Message-ID: <199503081820.NAA29411@grendel.csc.smith.edu> In-Reply-To: <199503081552.KAA12337@hermes.cybernetics.net> from "James Robinson" at Mar 8, 95 10:52:00 am
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James Robinson writes: > John Fieber is more or less our boss dude (slavedriver that he is :), but > has been absent for the past little while -- whassup John? Er, um... On leave. Really, I am very dedicated to the cause but Real Life (tm) has intruded sucking up nearly every spare moment I have. :( > SCSI document -- great!). We use a variant of the Linux DTD layered on > top of SGML to do the documents -- anyone know where John's latest > package containing his updated scripts / DTD is? let me know and I'll add > a pointer to it in the faq-new page. Some minor corrections, at this point we are using the Linuxdoc DTD, not a variant of it and "layered on top of SGML" isn't really correct, but whatever... To process documents tagged according to the linuxdoc DTD you need (1) the DTD, (2) the sgmls SGML parser and companion program sgmlsasp, (3) the "replacement" files that sgmlsasp uses to map tags in the original SGML document into whatever output you want (e.g. HTML tags, LaTeX, troff, etc.), and (4) a program to tie it all together. #1 and #3 come as one package and #2 can be had at ftp://ftp.jclark.com/. It should compile out of the box on 2.0R and later systems and I have some patches that work under 1.1.5.1 (at least). #4 is a problem. What comes in the linuxdoc packge is really ugly but sort of works. I started a rewrite in perl but ran out of spare time. I mailed what I had to Gary Clark. I also started some modifications to the linuxdoc DTD, but at this point, I think it would be a better plan to migrate over to the docbook dtd. Unfortunately, conversion tools are not (yet) publically available and the complexity of the DTD makes it moderately difficult to whip up a production quality converter. > The INSTALL document is the main thing to help people get the system up, > along with the ultra-friendly install procedures themselves (I'm not > being sarcastic there -- it really tries to hold your hand, IMO). However, this document overlooks some fundamental questions like where do I find the distribution, what files do I need to download, and what do I do with them once I've downloaded them. I've been with this since the early 386BSD days and I couldn't even figure out how to do an install from tape because the relevant information was not provided until late in the installation process. I like to have everything prepared for the installation BEFORE I start and I know other people do as well. What the install document desparately needs is an overview. The current one grabs your hand and stampeeds into the details without stopping to mention where you are going. The document should start with table of contents something like: 1. Basic hardware requirements 2. What the installation process will do to your system 2.1 repartition your hard drive 3. Preparing for the installation 3.1 Choose a method 3.1.1 CD-ROM 3.1.2 FTP 3.1.3 DOS partition 3.1.4 Tape 3.1.n ... 3.2 Making a boot floppy (Including the dd commands!) 4. Phase I: preparing the system 4.1 Starting the installation 4.2 Creating a slice for FreeBSD 4.3 Creating a Disklabel 4.4 Formatting the slice 4.5 Booting from the hard drive 5. Phase II: Installing the distributions Okay, I've got to go back into my hole again.... -john === jfieber@cs.smith.edu ================================================ =================================== Come up and be a kite! --K. Bush ===
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