Userrevised docs Was: aptget wants to install on remove

Alan Connor

Which packages require it? I haven't run a Debian kernel since shortly after I started using Linux in 1999.

Since they evolve on a per-user basis, they can become whatever the user wants them to be.

Globally modifiable HOWTO pages don't sound bad, though. At that point, though, the developer would want to include a "freeze" command, so that a user could specify that they only see a specific version of the docs from then on.

If a document is evolving quickly, and a user is growing frustrated that a he needs a specific piece of information that keeps moving around in the document, he might want to freeze the document so that it only updates every so often.

An alternate solution is to freeze the document for all users at the beginning of the week, and only unfreeze it for a user if-when that user wants to make a change.

Hm. What if the user had two files available to edit?

Say, rcsdoc.txt and rcsdoc.html? Editing one would copy the changes to the other.

Converting from html to unadorned text and back would require a diff algorithm with a by-character resolution, though. And some buttumptions on what modifications to plaintext docs would adopt nearby formatting on the formatting-adorned pages. For example, text prepended to a formatted region would not become formatted, while text appended to the region would.

Using named pipes, it should become possible to to use the user's editor-of-choice. (Be it vim, emacs, or gnotepad.)

Cheers Mike