The Linux Documentation Project Weekly News

Issue Number : 29
Publication Date : 2003-11-12

Table of Contents
1. New documents
1.1. Fresh@LDP
1.2. Submitted for review
2. Updates
2.1. HOWTOs and FAQs
2.2. Guides
3. Happenings in the LDP world
3.1. HOWTOs Lacking Depth
3.2. Document Rating System
3.3. LDP HOWTO Generator
4. Feedback and Contributions

1. New documents

1.1. Fresh@LDP

Chr. Clemens Lee sent in version 1.0 of the Debian Binary Package Building mini-HOWTO. The document explains how to build a minimal Debian (.deb) package for use on your systems.


1.2. Submitted for review

  • The PDF version of the DNS HOWTO. This document dates back to 2001 but does discuss Bind 9 configuration. However, be sure to download the latest release when working with Bind (fixes among other issues security issues with parameters discussed in Chapter 6 of the HOWTO).
  • Tabatha Marshall, our Review Coordinator, took over the Reviewer HOWTO and converted it to XML, checked the links and made it reflect the current review process.

2. Updates

2.1. HOWTOs and FAQs


2.2. Guides

  • The Pocket Linux Guide by David Horton at v2.0.
  • Gerard Beekmans published v5.0 of the Linux From Scratch HOWTO.
  • Also from David Ranch, the TrinityOS Guide. This document is a step-by-step example-driven explanation of how to build a very functional Linux box with a strong emphasis on security. In the new version David fixes version numbering issues on many of the daemons he mentions, and corrects a couple of statements having to do with the different Linux Distributions.

3. Happenings in the LDP world

3.1. HOWTOs Lacking Depth

A long discussion ensued following a feedback mail from Laurent Bedubourg stating that the PHP HOWTO by Alavoor Vasudevan was highly opinionated. David Lawyer said that his (Al Devs) HOWTOs lacked depth and technical correctness and was of the strong opinion that they should be removed from the collection. People said that Al Dev did not respond when they tried to contact him, though he did respond in a private mail from Tabatha about the ongoing discussion. John Levon posted details as to why the RCS/CVS HOWTO, C/C++ beautifier HOWTO and the Kernel HOWTO should be removed from the collection. Machtelt Garrels posted a summary.


3.2. Document Rating System

As a byproduct of the chain on review and removal of HOWTOs lacking Depth, several people suggested that there should be a document rating system. Lampadas was to solve all the problems, but since it is not ready yet, people suggested Bugzilla, A pre-set document lifetime, using wiki, and many other suggestions.


3.3. LDP HOWTO Generator

Stein Gjoen sent in an update to his LDP HOWTO Generator which he announced in August. The generator has now been tested with actual input, works with Netscape as well as IE, the resultant SGML is validated using sgmlcheck and it converts nicely into HTML.


4. Feedback and Contributions

The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is working on developing free, high quality documentation for the GNU/Linux operating system. Announcements about TLDP are made via . If you want to help TLDP, take a look at the tasks page, and consider joining .

Help us create this newsletter. We need volunteers who follow the community (mailing lists, newsgroups, web channels) and report events related to free software documentation. Write to us at .

LDP Weekly News is compiled and edited by Machtelt Garrels and Y Giridhar Appaji Nag with help from several other people.