Gentoo Archives: gentoo-doc

From: Xavier Neys <neysx@g.o>
To: gentoo-doc@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-doc] Re: [RFC] Marking unmaintained documents
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 12:12:09
Message-Id: loom.20050915T135454-193@post.gmane.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-doc] [RFC] Marking unmaintained documents by "Jan Kundrát"
1 Jan Kundrát wrote:
2 > Hi GDP-related entities,
3 > as promised on IRC, here are my ideas about $SUBJECT.
4 >
5 > Currently we have quite a lot of "unsupported"/"invalid"/"unmaintained"
6 > documents for one of these reasons:
7 >
8 > a) Third party article
9 > b) Older Handbook
10 > c) Translation in language which is not officially supported
11 > d) Outdated translation
12
13 Outdated translations are something different, but more about that later.
14
15 Adding a disclaimer at the beginning of a doc is a good idea IMO.
16
17 To clear a few points:
18 Adding a disclaimer is not about about making a doc unofficial.
19 Everything that we publish is official, or has been so at least.
20 If we want to make a doc officially unofficial, we remove it.
21
22 Of course, users reading a 2004.3 handbook should realise it's old, but they
23 could at least be told it's not maintained anymore so that 1) they can read it
24 with a grain of salt 2) they should not bother submitting bugs.
25
26 Dumping the text in the doc itself is not a great idea as it will lead to
27 cut'n'paste errors and lose consistency. Besides, scripts could not distinguish
28 normal content from such disclaimers.
29
30 Another way would have been to list the outdated/unmaintained docs in an
31 external file, or add attributes to metadoc. IMO, this adds some unnecessary
32 complexity.
33
34 I much prefer something along Flammie's idea, a new tag. This way, we just need
35 to add the tag to the relevant doc and forget about it.
36
37 As we already see the need for different disclaimers, I suggest using a
38 <disclaimer> tag with a type attribute. The relevant text is fished from our
39 inserts.xml files and I suggest displaying it right at the top of the content
40 area. It needs to be either before, after or on the side, but I'd rather not
41 insert it randomly in the text.
42
43 I have implemented a proposal with the following disclaimers:
44 "articles" for republished articles
45 "oldbook" self-explanatory
46 "obsolete" idem
47 Disclaimers can also auto-redirect users, very useful for obsolete docs.
48
49 Samples:
50 http://gentoo.neysx.org/mystuff/gentoo-x86-install.xml
51 http://gentoo.neysx.org/mystuff/l-sed2.xml
52 http://gentoo.neysx.org/mystuff/l-sed1.xml
53 http://gentoo.neysx.org/mystuff/oldbook.xml
54
55
56 Now about outdated translations:
57 It's possible to use metadoc to check the corresponding original and display a
58 note about a more recent original.
59 I've implemented the following:
60 If a translation is not listed in its local metadoc, warn users translation is
61 not maintained.
62 If a translation is listed in its local metadoc, but not in the parent one (ie.
63 the English one), warn users original doc is not maintained anymore.
64 If file appears both in local and English metadocs, compare their dates and warn
65 users that a more recent original exists with a link to it.
66
67 Notes:
68 0) All languages must have a metadoc.xml. Not a problem IMO. <metadoc/> will do
69 for currently unsupported languages.
70 1) We have to use metadoc and *may not* test the corresponding file (ie.
71 s:/pl/:/en/:) as that would force us to keep files we want to remove in /doc/en/
72 until all translated versions have disappeared.
73 2) We need to use the dates and not the versions because using the versions
74 would force us to compare handbooks file by file.
75 3) Reminder: the date of a handbook is the max_date(master, all parts)
76 4) Some of you need to stop bumping dates needlessly
77 5) link attributes must contain the full path, no more <book
78 link="handbook-x86.xml"> (not required on my test site, but would be on www.g.o)
79
80 At the moment, it is limited to /doc as dates are not reliable outside of /doc
81 anyway (not yyyy-mm-dd formatted or not bumped properly).
82
83 Samples:
84 http://gentoo.neysx.org/doc/fr/handbook/2005.1/
85 http://gentoo.neysx.org/doc/pl/nvidia-guide.xml
86
87 FYI, an inserts would like like
88 http://gentoo.neysx.org/doc/en/inserts-en.xml?passthru=1
89
90 Please comment.
91
92
93 Cheers,
94 --
95 / Xavier Neys
96 \_ Gentoo Documentation Project
97 / French & Internationalisation Lead
98 \ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en
99 /\
100
101
102 --
103 gentoo-doc@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-doc] Re: [RFC] Marking unmaintained documents "Jan Kundrát" <jkt@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-doc] Re: [RFC] Marking unmaintained documents Alexey Chumakov <achumakov@×××××.com>