[ANNOUNCE] xorg-sgml-doctools-1.2

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 04 March 2007, Daniel Stone wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 02:49:25PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> ok, so how do _I_ co-erce the system into showing me this output?  An
>> oft asked, but never answered question so far.  And its been asked
>> intermittently, on many mailing lists, by me, for what 4 or 5 years
>> now? If its so damned popular, why then can no one write a manpage
>> describing how to use it?  Seems like a heck of a good question to
>> me...
>
>./configure && make

In what directory?  And, an even better question to me is:  If its so 
good, why is it not in the single most popular distro going, the fedora 
core series?  But just for grins, I'm going to run an 'rpm -qA |GREP 
DOCBOOK' and see if any packages are installed, brb.

yes, I stand corrected, I have:
[root at coyote ~]# rpm -qa |grep docbook
docbook-dtds-1.0-30.1
docbook-style-xsl-1.69.1-5.1
docbook-slides-3.3.1-2.1.1
docbook-simple-1.0-2.1.1
docbook-utils-pdf-0.6.14-5.1
docbook-utils-0.6.14-5.1
docbook-style-dsssl-1.79-4.1
docbook2X-0.8.7-2.fc6

Am I expected to print the docbook-utils-pdf-0.6.14-5.1 to get info on how 
to run them?

Interesting, rpm says its installed, but locate cannot find it so I can 
look at it with acroread.

And this constitutes the majority of my bitch about docbook, every corner 
I turn, I find a sign that says I'm headed down the wrong road.  After a 
while I start looking at the gas gauge & looking for more fuel.


>> And I'm not consciously trying to be obnoxious, Daniel.  However it is
>> becoming more and more frustrating that the tools all take hard to
>> remember syntax, and one undotted i in the whole src file causes an
>> exit with a generally meaningless error message.  Have enough mercy on
>> us to at least wrap all this up in a bash script called 'manpage' or
>> something similar which only needs $1 to point at the docbook
>> formatted filename, located in a default directory for such files
>> maintained in an agreed upon standard '/some/place' as manpages are
>> now.
>
>I can see you're not trying to be obnoxious, but are you honestly
>arguing for manpages instead of DocBook as the raw format, on the
>grounds of 'hard to remember syntax'?
>
Yes Daniel.  Any format that takes 3 or more command line arguments, and 
at least 2 separate incantations of disparate utilities just to do the 
equ of a 'man name' is going to be extremely counterintuitive.  
Particularly for a newbie, and I've been running linux since rh5.1 days.


>Cheers,
>Daniel



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.