Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 21:03:50 +0000 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Udo Erdelhoff <ue@nathan.ruhr.de> Cc: doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Translators: Need feedback on FAQ reorganization Message-ID: <20010315210350.A1113@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <20010315200337.N83336@nathan.ruhr.de>; from ue@nathan.ruhr.de on Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 08:03:37PM %2B0100 References: <20010312093709.B3114@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010312212209.G77178@nathan.ruhr.de> <20010312214725.B74204@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010313002953.I77178@nathan.ruhr.de> <20010313124524.B2130@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010313231654.G83336@nathan.ruhr.de> <20010314131233.C6138@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010314210730.J83336@nathan.ruhr.de> <20010315023806.B46684@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <20010315200337.N83336@nathan.ruhr.de>
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On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 08:03:37PM +0100, Udo Erdelhoff wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 02:38:06AM +0000, Nik Clayton wrote:
> > If you've submitted stuff to the -doc list before and not had any feedb=
ack
> > then I'm sorry, but sometimes that's how things work.
>=20
> Yeah, that's what I told myself the first time a month's work went down
> the drain. I still believed it the second time. By the third time, I took
> the hint and stopped doing it.
How many of these were done as PRs? As already noted, you seem to have
a good record of getting PRs committed.
I can not miraculously whistle up another eight hours a day. It seems
as if no one else on this list can either.
I am also *not* about to start pulling out stuff committed by other
people because I don't have the time to go through it in detail. Talk
to Ruslan or Sheldon about their manual page work, or Neil about his
infrastructure work.
I'm not the only person on this list, and my occasional inabilities to
reply to everyone I want to is in no way a barrier to anyone else on the
list replying and offering constructive comment.
> > I've got
> > a bunch of e-mails pending in my -doc spool that I haven't replied to
> > yet, simply because I don't have the cycles to do them the justice they
> > deserve.
>=20
> That's exactly the wrong approach. No feedback is one the worst forms of
> disapproval; and the reason for the lack of feedback doesn't matter.
"Interesting idea, but I don't have the time to look at it right now,
please come back when I do" is also not going to encourage people to
contribute. If I have nothing constructive to add I try and stay away
from the topic until I can.
=20
> > Just because the stylesheet=20
> > *default* is to use the mnemonics doesn't mean that we have to go with =
the=20
> > default.
>=20
> I do not think that hacking the stylesheets until they bleed is a good
> idea. You're creating an additional hurdle for new contributors: The
> docbook reference says that using the bibliography markup gives you
> mnemonics and a seperate bibliography page.=20
I don't know where you get the idea that DocBook says anything about the
processing expectations if you XRef to a biblioentry. I've gone through
The Definitive Guide, and can't see it, and Norm's stylesheets already
support multiple mechanisms for generating the biblio link text.
Currently, if <xref> to a <biblioentry> Norm's stylesheets will, by
default, put the ID in the link. However, that default can *already* be
changed in Norm's stylesheets. If you do=20
(define biblio-xref-title #t)
then the title will be used instead. There is no reason you couldn't
add a new function that used the title, ISBN number, and (say) a link to
Amazon, keyed off a biblio-xref-more variable (OK, bad choice of
variable name).
This is entirely within the spirit of DocBook, and SGML.
In fact, without making any changes to the stylesheets at all, <xref>
will use the contents of xreflabel attribute, or the <abbrev> element
inside the biblioentry, if it exists, in preference to just using the
mnemonic.
And, of course, you don't have to use <xref> with its automatically
generated text. You could use <link> instead, and supply the link text
yourself. Personally, I think that's generally a bad idea if you intend
the link text to duplicate data that's already in the biblioentry,
because then you have to update the same data in multiple places.
IMHO, any of these approaches is preferable to putting in a table for
formatting rather than semantic purposes.
N
--=20
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve http://www.freebsd.org/
FreeBSD Documentation Project http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/
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