LDP, LKB, and more

[Jason Pincin <chardros@linuxkb.org>]

Greeting members of the Techwriters list,

My name is Jason Pincin, lead of The Linux Knowledge Base project at
http://www.linuxkb.org, and this email is in response to two postings
online:

http://www.linuxports.com/ldp.htm
http://slashdot.org/features/99/08/25/1351232.shtml

First, let me say that your proposal for the LDP is noble.  It closely
resembles something our group is working on at the URL I provided above.
I'm writing this email for several resons - I fear duplication of effort,
to toss another opinion into the void, and to learn more about the
intentions of those involved with the LDP proposal.

I believe that the LDP and what you are talking about are two entirely
different projects and/or applications.  I'm going to make the assumption
that what you are proposing closely resembles what our group is working
on.  A well indexed, searchable, and easily maintained collection of
information that targets problems/questions and delivers accurate answers.
Or perhaps you are targeting plain old documentation but are going for the
other benefits I just mentioned.  Either way, these comments hold true.

Such organized documentation will be an awsome tool for users of the
affected products anywhere.  No question.  But what the LDP does is
something completely different.  The LDP has taken on the task of
collecting and managing something that has nothing in common really.  It's
difficult to organize items that have nothing in common.  Or at most, one
thing - they all document somehting.  How they document it, what format
they use, etc. are all upto the author.

And thats how it should be.  And to that end, the LDP is doing an
excellent job.  No one in the community should be able to mandate that I
draft my documentation in format X.  What if I don't want to?  What if I
refuse?  I say, I'm going to draft my documentation in format Y.  Now what
happens?  The newfound LDP only accepts format X.  So my document doesn';t
get included.  My document becomes hard to find.  Thats no good.  

This is what the LDP is used for - m,aking any sort of Linux Documentation
widely and easily accesible.  Matt Welsh's comments should be reviewd
heavily, because this is similar to what he says.

Now -

As I have already stated... I am working with an excellent group of
developers on The Linux Knowledge Base Project.  We have garnered much
support from all different areas.  Our project focuses on providing a
standard way of searching through documentation to find answers to
probvlems and questions.  It may evolve into more than that, but that is
our go-live focus.  We will be tying in tightly with the development
community to insure accurate information on applications - we will be
providing Knowledge Gateways to allow documents or proposed documents to
come into the system through various avenues.  Documents may be generated
from mailing lists, from online forms, from discussing on the site, where
ever.  As far as the documentation itself - there are two types.
Articles, and external documentation.  Externbal documentation will
consist of things such as the LDP, and many other resources.  Article's
are our own open document format.  Each will be easily searchable through
the provided interfaces which will also continue to be expanded.  This is
done by linking pieces of external documentation into the same object
hiearchy as the article's themselves.  

It is a completely modular design that is capable of being extended far
beyond what it is currently intenbded for.  Over the past 9 months we have
put a tremendous amount of time and resources into proper planning of the
building blocks for this thing.  Those things are nearly complete.  The
interface is already well underway with many portions done.  

I'm very interested in how you might percieve our two projects to be
overlapping.  I'm also very interested to know how you feel about the
thoughts above on the purposes, etc. of the LDP.  I look forward to
hearing from anyone - and encourage anyone interested in our own project
to ask all the questions you would like.

Jason Pincin
http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~chardros