On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 10:05:37PM +0100, Phil Pennock wrote:
>
> What interest is there in developing this document using the
> Exim-Users list? Or on a new list? I can run up a MailMan (sorry)
> list easily. I can even turn <email-fundamentals@???> into
> a list instead of an alias pointing to me. ;^) Or are people happy
> having revisions of the document posted here, discussion here, etc?
I'd like to see this become a project on SourceForge (or something
similar). I'll volunteer to do basic maintenance of the project and
write parts of the document.
I suggest this for two reasons: one, this docucment ought to transcend
the Exim community and be applicable to anyone that runs a SMTP
server. Two, SourceForge has the infrastructure in place for CVS
access, web serving, mailing lists etc.
Of course, if you wish to retain sole control of the document that's
your right.
> I've looked at the FSF position on document licensing. I've moved the
> document to be under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Excellent!
> v0.02 available at:
> <http://www.globnix.org/mail-intro.txt>
While ASCII text is the lowest common denominator when it comes to
file formats may I suggest that we use SGML or XML (and the DocBook
DTD specifically) to keep the source document in?
I spent a little time converting your original document into DocBook
format and had some success at producing PDF and HTML formats.
Getting ASCII text back should be possible but I haven't spent a lot
of time looking into that or producing an index.
The big benefit of using DocBook is the ability to generate a wide
variety of formats from one source. Also, if the time ever comes to
publish the book on paper through a real publisher having the book
already in DocBook format can make the process smoother (this is one
of the acceptable formats for O'Reilly, I don't know about other
publishers).
One downside to using DocBook is that it would make it harder for
authors to contribute. There are free tools for editing SGML/XML and
producing nice output but it's a bit piecemeal. It looks like RedHat
will have decent DocBook utilities in 7.1, they may be there in 7.0
too, I haven't checked. I have no idea what's available on Windows or
other platforms.
> Changes made in v0.02:
> * dropped the name of the draft version as that leads to confusion; we
> let people who know about IETF drafts find it themselves.
Actually, I would suggest making appendixes on how to find RFCs and
Internet-Drafts. If this goes to print we might actually want to
include the RFCs as appendixes.
> * Put in the stuff about sendmail -t
If we are going to include details regarding specific MTAs and MUAs
they should be placed in separate chapters or appendixes.
Personally I'm not sure that we want to deal with specific MTAs and
MUAs unless we get authors to actively participate that know the ins
and outs of the MTAa and MUAs that we cover.
> * Sketched out the topics for the unwritten last two sections, using
> notes from Jeffrey Goldberg's topics list (which provided the
> reference for the bits already written in fact).
I think that the whole document would benefit greatly if we would work
up a detailed outline of the document. With a detailed outline
individual authors can contibute sections of the document. Of course
someone will have to act as an editor to keep the language and style
consistent.
> Philip: for sendmail -t, I've quoted from the Exim documentation for
> extract_addresses_remove_arguments -- is this okay?
Of course, if Phillip objects we should obey his wishes, but in
general short quotes from other documents is permitted without prior
authorization under the "fair use" doctrine.
Jeff
