[DOC-SIG] Library reference manual debate

[Andrew Kuchling]

"Fred L. Drake" <fdrake@CNRI.Reston.Va.US> wrote:
>2.  An online knowledgebase of HOW-TO articles, FAQs, and the like
>    needs to be available.  This could be updated in a more continuous 
>    fashion, with distribution packages produced in a similar way to
>    the primary documentation packages.

	This would be very useful, but why does it need to have any
constraints on input format at all?

	We already have a "Hints and Guides" page at
http://www.python.org/doc/Hints.html, which is a good starting point.
The only problem is that it doesn't aim for completeness, and you
can't search the text of the linked-to articles and guides .

	For the first problem, hopefully before too long we'll have
some sort of automated system for adding links, similar to FAQwizard.
(This would be useful for both the contributed software pages, and the
hints & guides page; they could be made comprehensive without making
Ken Manheimer spend all his time maintaining them.)  I don't know how
to solve the second problem; you can't really have the Ultraseek
server on python.org crawl those pages, because it's not known how far
to crawl.

>  It sounds as if there's a lot of work ahead.  Does anyone know of
>existing "knowledgebase" systems that allow document updates and
>interdocument linking, at least in the form of See-Also's?  I think it 
>would be nice to have something better than dejanews searches.

	BSCW, maybe?  But there's a BSCW server on starship, and I
don't think many people use it.  We have one at Magnet, too, and it
doesn't get much use, either.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com
	http://starship.skyport.net/crew/amk/

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