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doc-base
Manual
doc-base
Some time ago, there was a big discussion on the Debian mailing lists about the preferred documentation format in Debian. The discussion showed clearly that people have very different opinions on that topic and thus, we'll have to implement a flexible solution.
The doc-base
package tries to implement such a flexible solution:
Every Debian package that provides online documentation (other than manual
pages) will register these documents to doc-base
via the
install-docs
script (see below) at installation time and
de-register the manuals again when the package is removed.
With this registration process, doc-base
will be provided with
details about the installed manuals, file names, documentation formats, etc.
Based on the doc-base
configuration which can be easily adjusted
by the local system administrator, doc-base
will eventually
convert between different documentation formats (where available, for example,
texinfo source to GNU info or PostScript), optionally compress or remove HTML
manuals which are also available in GNU info format, etc. etc.
Since all manuals will eventually by registered, doc-base
can also
be used to solve another outstanding problem: Debian currently has three
different online documentation systems, doc-central
,
dwww
and dhelp
. Since each system has advantages and
disadvantages, doc-base supports all of them. The system administrator can
choose which implementation he/she prefers.
In summary, doc-base
's main functionality is:
convert online manuals between different documentation formats (depending on its configuration), and
register online manuals to Debian's online help systems.
Only the second part has been implemented so far.
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Debian doc-base
Manual
schwarz@debian.org
aph@debian.org