4. HOWTO Project Developement

Contents of this section

4.1 Wanted HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs

If you are interested in writing about any of these subject, please get in touch with me at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu .

• GCC/LIBRARY HOWTO. Discussing installation/upgrading of GCC and shared libraries under Linux. How to build shared libraries. Most of the material would come from Mitchum DeSouza's GCC FAQ.
• Notebook HOWTO or Notebook mini-HOWTO. A guide to notebooks - information about power management, LCD displays, video controlers, pointers to related material (PCMCIA-HOWTO), and most anything pertaining to notebooks.
• If you have an idea for another HOWTO or mini-HOWTO, please get in touch.

4.2 HOWTOs Currently Under Contruction

• The Printing HOWTO is being completely rewritten, and will be superceded by the Printing Usage and Printing Setup HOWTOs.
• The Tips HOWTO is being rewritten.
• A Shadow Password mini-HOWTO is being written.
• A Partitioning mini-HOWTO is being written.
• A Security HOWTO is being written.
• A DNS HOWTO is being written.
• An Info Services HOWTO.

4.3 Writing and Submitting a HOWTO

If you would like to write a Linux HOWTO document, there are a few guidelines that you should follow.

• Get in touch with me first, and let me know you want to work on something. You can reach me at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu .
• Try to use meaningful structure and organization, and write clearly. Remember that many of the people reading HOWTOs do not speak English as their first language.
• If you are writing a HOWTO, you must use the Linuxdoc-SGML package, available from sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils/text/, to format the HOWTO. This package allows us to produce LaTeX (for dvi and PostScript), plain text, and HTML from a single source document, and was designed by Matt Welsh specifically for the HOWTOs. This also gives all of the HOWTOs a uniform look.
• If you are writing a mini-HOWTO, you can use any form you wish. mini-HOWTOs are meant to be short, free-form HOWTOs on very specific subjects. In general, these should be quick to write and maintain, so it's not worth bothering with the Linuxdoc-SGML package. This does not mean that the mini-HOWTOs are any less important! Only plain text versions of mini-HOWTOs are distributed.
• Make sure that all of the information is correct. I can't stress this enough. When in doubt, speculate, but make it clear that you're only guessing.
• Make sure that you are covering the most recent version of the available software. Also, be sure to include full instructions on where software can be downloaded from (FTP site name, full pathname), and the current version number and release date of the software.
• Include an FAQ section at the end, if appropriate. Many HOWTO documents need an "FAQ" or "Common Problems" section to cover information which can't be covered in the regular text.
• Use other HOWTOs as a model. The SGML source to the HOWTOs is available on Linux FTP sites.
• Lastly, be prepared to receive questions and comments about your writing. There are several hundreds of accesses to the HOWTO collection every day from around the world!

After you have written the HOWTO, mail it to me. If you used Linuxdoc-SGML, simply mail me the SGML source; I take care of formatting the documents. I'll also take care of archiving the HOWTOs on sunsite.unc.edu and posting them to the various newsgroups.

It is important that you go through me when submitting a HOWTO, as I maintain the archives and need to keep track of what HOWTOs are being written and who is doing what.

Then, all you have to do is send me periodic updates whenever appropriate.

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