Re: Max size for a FAQ ?

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message: Frederic Albrecht: "Can one submit a draft ?"
• Previous message: Bill Keyes aka the Ferret-Meister: "How did *you* get into this business?"

> > Anyway since the text will probably quickly grow to 100K or so, what is
> > the maximum recommended size for a multipart FAQ ?
>
> Recommended max size is 60K. Mine got up over 90K and I never had any
> comments on the size. Well, except occasionally from AOL users, whose
> software has trouble with anything over 27K. I won't cater to that.

This is more of an AOL software problem. There is no reason they couldn't
hanle anything larger than that... (why 27K ???). Do they plan on fixing
this ?

> But 90K was unwieldy to maintain, and I think most people who get the
> whole thing -- either as a posting or by ftp -- will find it easier to
> read in smaller chunks. More like the chapters of a book. The pieces
> are now 12K - 40K, with three of the five just under 30K. All parts
> will grow ... I hope.

And me always doing cat foo.faq.0? >> foo.faq ; rm foo.faq.0? :)
I find it much easier to grep through a single file with less or some such
tool...

> Even if you don't split the first version, use the multipart convention
> for the archive name ... that is, Archive-name: subject/faq/part1. That
> way when you split it later you won't have to change the archive name.
> Changing the name caused me some troubles because the old version
> didn't get deleted in some places because it was never replaced. The
> WWW converter at OSU -- wonderful though it is -- was the worst
> offender here.

This is excellent advice, I'll set it up that way... Changing the headers
seems to be a bit complicated and I might very well end-up splitting the
whole thing some day.

> > There's another problem I have which is the newsgroup selection
>
> If the other newsgroups have faqs, get them to mention yours. They
> should be delighted to be able to point to another resource. If they
> include a URL reference, then when it gets on the web at OSU it will be
> a link.

Ah but will OSXXX diehards point to a document that lists *other*
operating systems ? This is close to a religious issue :) Well I'll give
it a try.

Thank you for your advice !

Fred.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This text is entirely made of the freshest hand picked electrons
I speak for no one except me and my cat.
---------------------------------- Linux ------------------------------------

• Next message: Frederic Albrecht: "Can one submit a draft ?"
• Previous message: Bill Keyes aka the Ferret-Meister: "How did *you* get into this business?"

[ Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive | Search Mail Archive | Authors | Usenet ]
[ 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 ]