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Debian doc-base Manual
Chapter 1 - About doc-base

Some time ago, there was a big discussion on the Debian mailing lists about the preferred documentation format in Debian because the current section in the policy manual about documentation contradicts itself (cf. bug #7890). The discussion showed clearly that people have very different opinions on that topic and thus, we'll have to implement a flexible solution so that everyone is pleased.

The doc-base package tries to implement such a flexible solution: Every Debian package that provides online documentation (other than manual pages) will register these documents to doc-base via the install-docs script (see below) at installation time and de-register the manuals again once the package is removed.

With this registration process, doc-base will be provided with details about the installed manuals, file names, documentation formats, etc. Based on the doc-base configuration which can easily adjusted by the local system administrator, doc-base will eventually convert between different documentation formats (where available, for example, texinfo source to GNU info or PostScript), optionally compress or remove HTML manuals which are also available in GNU info format, etc. etc.

Since all manuals will eventually by registered, doc-base can also be used to solve another outstanding problem: Debian currently has two different online documentation systems, dwww and dhelp. Since both systems have their advantages and disadvantages, it has been decided to support both packages and let the system administrator choose which implementation he/she prefers.

However, this requires all packages to support both online documentation systems. This can be done easily via doc-base (see below).

In summary, doc-base's main functionality is:

• convert online manuals between different documentation formats (depending on its configuration), and
• register online manuals to Debian's online help systems, dwww and dhelp.

Until now, only the second part has been implemented.

Debian doc-base Manual