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Debian doc-base Manual
Chapter 1 - About doc-base

Some time ago, there was a big discussion on the Debian mailing lists about the preferred documentation format in Debian. The discussion showed clearly that people have very different opinions on that topic and thus, we'll have to implement a flexible solution.

The doc-base package tries to implement such a flexible solution: Every Debian package that provides online documentation (other than manual pages) will register these documents to doc-base via the install-docs script (see below) at installation time and de-register the manuals again when the package is removed.

With this registration process, doc-base will be provided with details about the installed manuals, file names, documentation formats, etc. Based on the doc-base configuration which can be easily adjusted by the local system administrator, doc-base will eventually convert between different documentation formats (where available, for example, texinfo source to GNU info or PostScript), optionally compress or remove HTML manuals which are also available in GNU info format, etc. etc.

Since all manuals will eventually by registered, doc-base can also be used to solve another outstanding problem: Debian currently has three different online documentation systems, doc-central, dwww and dhelp. Since each system has advantages and disadvantages, doc-base supports all of them. The system administrator can choose which implementation he/she prefers.

In summary, doc-base's main functionality is:

• convert online manuals between different documentation formats (depending on its configuration), and

• register online manuals to Debian's online help systems.

Only the second part has been implemented so far.

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Debian doc-base Manual