Re: Documentation Proposal

[Martin Wahlen <mva sbbs se>]

On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Mark Galassi wrote:

> 
>     Martin> On 20 Aug 1998, Jim Pick wrote:
>     >> This is a bad idea from the point of view of a person that is
>     >> packaging it.
> 
>     Martin> Agreed
> 
> I also agree: an individual program's docs should be with the program.

Yes, this is not for the structured doc, that should be with each program.
This would be for the global documentation (ui-guide, devel-guide etc).
One of the beauties of SGML is that you can work with components. These
components can then very easily be structured into documents. Now, global
components (such as the GPL) should be in the global repository with a
PUBLIC identifier. This ID can then be used to include the GPL into any
GNOME document. 

What does this accomplish? Well, it makes it easier to keep documentation
that occurs in more than one place current in all places. It makes it 
easy to reuse parts of other documents in your own documents. There are
other advantages and dissadvantages to this, but I belive that looking at
the CVS module as a database of usefull stuff is a good approach. Ok, so I
may be bias since I have spent a lot of time Document Managment and SGML
sales people:-) 

Martin 

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Martin Wahlén		Sound Foundation Inc.	    tel.    (613) 563-2226
mwahlen@soundfound.com  152 Hawthorne Ave.          fax.    (613) 563-2228
www.soundfound.com      K1S 0B3

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