Announcing the Ubuntu Manpage Repository

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/9/7 Steve Langasek <steve.langasek at ubuntu.com>:
> On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 12:57:57PM +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> 2008/9/6 Dustin Kirkland <kirkland at ubuntu.com>:
>> > I just thought I'd mention that a new resource available to the Ubuntu
>> > user and developer communities, the Ubuntu Manpage Repository:
>
>> >  * http://manpages.ubuntu.com
>
>> > This site aims to be a comprehensive collection of HTML viewable
>> > manpages included in Ubuntu (dapper, feisty, gutsy, hardy, intrepid),
>> > and (main, universe, restricted, multiverse), and across all
>> > languages/locales, and is in addition to the wonderful resources of
>> > Official Ubuntu Documentation (http://help.ubuntu.com) and
>> > User-contributed Ubuntu documentation (http://wiki.ubuntu.com).
>
>> Would it not be better to contribute to The Linux Documentation
>> Project? I'm not being cynical, but this looks like a case of NIH.
>
>> http://tldp.org/
>
> manpages.ubuntu.com is a site to provide on-line access to all the manpages
> included in each of the releases of Ubuntu.  How does that duplicate the
> LDP, which is mostly about authoring documentation?  Why would the LDP want
> to keep track of which manpages are in each Ubuntu release?
>

Maybe I am misunderstanding, Steve. It looks like manpages.ubuntu.com
is a collection of manpages. This page on tldp links to lists of
manpages in general:
http://tldp.org/manpages/man.php

So anything that would be included in manpages.ubuntu.com would
already be available from a page mentioned there.

Now, your project may be a quality-control project designed to keep
everything inhouse and on a *.ubuntu.com domain. If so, that is fine
but it is usually referred to as NIH (not invented here) and is often
frowned upon for duplicating effort and displaying non-trust in
third-parties (I remind you that a distribution is by definition a
collection of third-party code by the way).

I do not object to the existence of manpages.ubuntu.com I just want to
clarify it's purpose and decide if it will be useful for me. I just
feel that there is already too much reduplication of effort in
_hosting_ documentation and not enough effort into _writing_
documentation. If you want to help with Linux documentation, then the
community would be better off with someone writing the docs, not with
someone hosting them in yet another place for the 16th time.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

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