OASIS DocBook TC2

  • 1.  Bob's action item

    Posted 03-24-2003 22:05
    I'm following up on one of my action items.  This is
    regarding the suggestion to permit more than a single
    refnamediv in a refentry.  My task was to provide an
    example of a reference page that included multiple names
    and purposes for a set of related functions.
    
    See this example for a set of related commands:
    
    http://uw713doc.caldera.com/en/man/html.1/ls.1.html
    
    This page documents several variations on the Unix "ls" 
    command.  They all share the same options, so creating
    separate reference pages for each would be a lot of
    duplication.  But each has a somewhat different function,
    so we wanted a separate purpose phrase that would go into
    the man whatis database so the extra keywords
    could be searched on with man -k.
    
    An example with several related programming functions
    would be:
    
    http://uw713doc.caldera.com/en/man/html.3S/fprintf.3S.html
    
    If you view HTML source on either of these, you will see
    a set of HTML comments that look like this:
    
    <!--Meta N2 "lc"-->
    <!--Meta D2 "list contents of directory in columns"-->
    <!--Meta N2 "l"-->
    <!--Meta D2 "list contents of directory in long format"-->
    <!--Meta N2 "lf"-->
    <!--Meta D2 "list contents of directory in columns indicating object type"-->
    <!--Meta N2 "lr"-->
    <!--Meta D2 "list contents of directory recursively in columns"-->
    <!--Meta N2 "lx"-->
    <!--Meta D2 "list contents of directory in columns sorted horizontally"-->
    
    The UnixWare makewhatis tool looks for such comments and
    adds these extra names and purpose lines to the whatis
    database.  
    
    
    Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
    Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
    Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
    The SCO Group                               fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                                email: bobs@sco.com