On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Ruth Ivimey-Cook wrote:
<lots of comments>
Thanks for the useful feedback, which I'll study. Quick responses:
> IMO it would be good to make this a lot clearer in the docs, and perhaps
> even in the config. Would the following be a good start?
I must think about various suggestions some more, but one point is
important: reading in Exim's configuration must not require much
computing, because it happens so often. I have a feeling that more clear
documentation, and possible more comments in the default configuration,
may be a compromise here.
> There is a bitmask, and you can set it to numbers, but normally you use names:
>
> log = all -a -b
Yes, I had thought of that extension, but forgot to mention it.
> It would seem to me that exim
> could reimplement gethostbyname() using code it already includes, and so
> avoid this issue.
No, I'm afraid it couldn't, because gethostbyname() looks at data sources
other than the DNS, usually by consulting /etc/nsswitch.conf. I
certainly don't want to reproduce all that apparatus!
> I would suggest using sgml source, seeing as I work as tech-author using
> sgml, because you can target several output formats.
I certainly would not like to maintain a document in raw SGML, because
of its verbosity, though of course one can trivially generate it from
some simpler markup (which is what I've done for the Exim book).
> Whatever, I would personally vote for 3 formats:
I suspect the info-lovers wouldn't like me if I abolished the Texinfo
version, though maybe I'm wrong. Maybe HTML is taking over. Would
anybody out there who uses the Texinfo documentation like to comment?
> (a) html online, -- very useful for the quick reference, and for
> following xrefs around
> (b) postscript book -- good for getting the basic understanding.
> something to sit down with for a while
We have those of course. Also the plain text ascii version - useful for
grepping and cutting-and-pasting into replies to questions on the list.
> (c) unix man-page -- containing basic info and command line opts (order
> 5-10 pages). Quick reference card kind of thing. Actually I would vote for
> 2 pages: exim(1) and exim-conf(5).
This has been suggested before, but I do not want to have to maintain
two different versions of the same information. The command line stuff
is all in spec.txt, and from 3.20 there is a list of options and
build-time options in OptionLists.txt.
> Regarding content, I would ask for more examples and common setup info.
> When I first started, I found it an uphill struggle to find out what I had
> to do for my site, what was optional, and how to do it.
This is an ongoing complaint. I hope that the forthcoming book may
be the answer to some of this, but unfortunately, Exim is so flexible it
is difficult to cover all possibilities. I intend to keep the reference
manual very much as a reference manual. Once the book has been
published, there may even be an excuse to put *fewer* examples in the
ref manual.
> Hope this is useful,
Yes, it is. Thank you.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
