Re: Linux 2.2.11pre4

Jim Gettys (jg@pa.dec.com)
Tue, 3 Aug 1999 10:16:16 -0700


>
> The problem with HTML is that it's becoming less and less standard as
> Micro$oft keeps tweaking it. I would therefore say that if you wish to
> use HTML for documentation, you should ensure that it looks decent
> under any reasonable browser - and if the stuff being documented does
> not require a graphics interface itself, that the HTML looks decent
> when read using lynx !!!
>

A good start for making sure your HTML is likely to be correct (and display
correctly) is to run it through a validator. There are a number around:
one I know of on the top of my head is:

validator.w3.org

In the long term, XML with style sheets is likely the right way to go:
but browsers don't yet generally implement it (though they are working
on it.

There is currently a proposal in the IETF describing a DTD for their
documents.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mrose-writing-rfcs-02.txt

You will note that the intent is to generate multiple formats on output:
plaintext, HTML, XML + style sheet, etc. Something like this is the
right long term approach.

But I sure am not a fan of Info, and find the current state of Linux
documentation a true mess: on UNIX systems, at least man did something
useful all the time... Of any single thing I find wrong with Linux,
arguably this mess is the biggest of them.

- Jim Gettys

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