Re: Is there a need for a hard copy OpenBSD documentation project?

[Fredrik Henbjork <frehe491@student.liu.se>]

Luke Bakken <luke_bakken@yahoo.com> wrote:
> After reading this thread about printed manuals, let me share what I've
> done since using OpenBSD.
> 
> First, I'd print the needed man pages from the web. Not the prettiest, but
> it works, and you get relatively recent versions. Then I'd to the
> 
> man ipnat | col -b | enscript -2rB -o output.ps
> 
> thing and use ghostview/ghostscript to view and print them out on a non-ps
> printer (epson 600). this worked better and the output was pretty good -
> good enough for a reference.
> 
> now i have access to a ps printer, so the method in the FAQ (groff -mdoc
> -Tps) combined with psnup provies 2-up really nicely formatted man pages.
> 
> i've punched and organized the pages into several notebooks, and i update
> those pages that change when the source man page changes. i obviously
> haven't printed everything out, but does everyone really need a hard copy
> of the cat command man page?
> 
> so what i'm getting at is that a "good enough" solution already exists, is
> easily updateable, and probably cheaper than buying books. ghostscript
> supports a lot of non-ps printers, and those lucky enough to have a
> ps-printer available are in an even better situation.

But that's just a printing solution. My personal interest in having
the manual pages in a XML-format is that this would provide a nice
way to build databases and *customized* documentation solutions for
a lot of different formats, not just paperbased ones. A hypothetical
example: a company which makes a OpenBSD based network tool wishes
to have parts of selected manual pages in HTML-format in the same
style as the rest of the product's documentation. They also want
to have the same documentation printed in a unified style.

-- 
Fredrik Henbjork

http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se