* Sat 2000-08-05 Warren Sarle <saswss@unx.sas.com> list.faq-maintainers
| From: hes@unity.ncsu.edu
| > ...
| > From the beginning of our FAQ (for alt.locksmithing) we have
| > maintained the "master" copy as an HTML document and made it available
| > on the Web (now at http://www.indra.com/archives/alt-locksmithing/) as
| > well as posting it.
|
| I also do that with the comp.ai.neural-nets FAQ. I think this is
| much better than converting text to html, since a text-to-html
| converter can't possibly know everything that should or shouldn't
| be linked.
|
| > > - Does the current static question/answer format solve
| > > the needs today ?
| >
| > I don't think so. When people are vitally interested in something,
| > they just might read through a 1000+ line FAQ, but I don't think that
| > most people will do that. In our FAQ we tried to made it a bit easier
| > by listing all the Questions at the beginning, and then answering them
| > in order (this is common practice) but I've often wondered if there is a
| > better way.
|
| A good html index would be a big help, preferably an index created
| automatically by tagging phrases to be put in the index. I don't
| know if there is already a tool for doing this. I've thought about
| writing one, but have never had a couple days to spare to do it.
This is just an my experiences, coming From Unix background amd
later moved to win32:
Best format is TEXT
-- it is readable by all, without any extra software
-- deliverable by email
-- Most easily kept in version control
-- Most easily patched ( when someone sends a diff -u ...)
-- Most easily handed to someone else when (I, you) no longer
maintain it. (If you have specialised tools, people
need to learn them in order to maintain your faq.)
So my choice has been [1]
-- Keeps FAQ as plain text, normal "white paper", or as I call
it, in Technical format (TF)
-- Have Emacs minor-mode handle formatting the FAQ and generating
TOC, renumbering heading etc. Emacs is crossplatform editor.
-- Have a program to generate HTML. I chose perl, because it's
crossplatform compatible (Win32, Unix, VAX ..)
In fact any other formats are not needed: why PS?, why PDF? when
you can use the HTML and print it.
Jari
Footnotes: (Generated by emacs package footnote.el)
[1] Refer to:
http://poboxes.com/jari.aalto/t2html.txt -- plain text (TF)
http://poboxes.com/jari.aalto/t2html.html -- generated page.
http://poboxes.com/jari.aalto/t2html-perl.html Perl man page
http://poboxes.com/jari.aalto/tiny-tools.tar.gz Emacs tools
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