Re: Please comment on Online XEmacs Manuals
Hi.
On 15 Dec 2001, Adrian Aichner wrote:
>>>>> "Jarl" == Jarl Friis
<jarl(a)diku.dk> writes:
[]
>>
>> The big questions I can't decide on are these:
>>
>> How many sets of manuals should we have online?
>> o stable and gamma and beta
>> o only beta
>> o only stable
>> At this point http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/beta takes up
>> ca. 18000KB.
Jarl> My opinion: For every stable major.minor *and* the latest
Jarl> (unstable) beta
Every stable could expand to 19.0 .. 21.1, a long list, a lot of disk,
very little value.
So, who cares about disk space these days. In Denmark virtually every ISP
seem to give users unlimited disk-space for their homepage. I use that for
backup of my workstation in a non-accessible directory ;-)
I think we need a old-documentation-removal-criterion.
If so, the ones who have opinions about diskspace should set these
criterias.
>>
>> Should we use symbolic names as suggested above?
>>
>> Should we put them under specific version number directories like
>> http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.1.14/
>> to make references to them specific (beta was 21.2 yesterday and is
>> 21.5 today)?
Jarl> Both, but use symbolic names when making links, that would
Jarl> be easier to bookmark, and refer to from other HTML
Jarl> documents, but store them in version directories, that also
Jarl> makes it possible to link to specific versions.
I do now understand this. Please give examples.
I wish the following URLS would be valid:
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/beta/
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/gamma/
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.4/
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/stable/
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.1/
and stable versionnumbers back as fas as diskspace allows
I don't consider it relevant to have versionnumber-urls for beta releases
(but it doesn't hurt)
[]
When pointing to these for discussion or advice on mailing lists one
would be well advises to use specific version numbers instead.
Agree, I think we agree pretty much.
One could say:
You will always find the docs for the current beta release in
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/beta/...
To see how new feature is used, refer to
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.1/html/xemacs.html#SOMETHING
>>
>> Should we only use major.minor to increase the manual's lifetime and
>> just update to latest on that branch from time to time?
>> e.g. http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.1/
Jarl> The editor is unchanged (with respect to features) among
Jarl> patch-numbers, so with that in mind major.minor should be
Jarl> enough for documentation, but then again bugs are fixed in
Jarl> documentation too from patch-number to patch-number. But for
Good, I think we have agreement on this.
Actually from the stable change policiy:
We undertake to make no changes to the stable code that are not absolutely
required to fix critical bugs that can cause data loss (including crashes,
which can always destroy data) or open security holes.
One can conclude documentation is constant through *all* patch-numbers(I
haven't checked if it holds), so our discussion is irelevant for stable
versions at least.
Regarding which packages texi manuals should be online I don't know how
much manual work it costs, but in general I think those who care of
diskspace should make a decision here too.
Jarl