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From: "Paul W. Schleck K3FU" <pschleck@oasis.novia.net>
Message-Id: <199707261636.LAA14815@oasis.novia.net>
Subject: auto-faq User Tips #5
To: auto-faq-users@novia.net, faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:36:00 -0500 (CDT)
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This is the auto-faq User Tips bulletin #5. User Tips is an occasional,
maybe once or twice a year, bulletin of subtle hints and tricks (as well
as bug reports and version updates) for the auto-faq FAQ management and
posting package. It is sent to auto-faq-users@novia.net and
faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu.
Back Issues
-----------
Back issues of User Tips are available from the auto-faq WWW Page:
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/
anonymous FTP site:
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/
and ftpmail server:
Send a mail message to ftpmail@ftp.novia.net with the following commands
in the message body:
open
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/INDEX
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/1
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/2
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/3
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/4
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/5
etc...
auto-faq is now freely usable under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was a long-term goal of mine for the auto-faq package. Ian Kluft
had already freely distributed auto-faq under reasonably permissive
terms, but I had wanted to use the well-known terms of the GPL to assure
the auto-faq user community that auto-faq would be continue to be an
example of freely shared and usable software technology. Ian Kluft
agreed to allow me to do this.
However, my contractual relationship with my employer (and the terms of
the GPL) made it necessary to seek their permission first. After many
months of paperwork, discussion, feedback, reminders, and several levels
of legal and management review, my employer has finally agreed. So, as
of the final 3.3 version, auto-faq is now covered under the GPL. For
more information about the GPL, obtain the file COPYING either from the
auto-faq distribution or from any GNU mirror site. For a list of mirror
sites, see:
http://www.fsf.org/order/ftp.html
Perl 5-compatible auto-faq 3.3 is now final
-------------------------------------------
The Perl 5-compatible version of auto-faq, 3.3, has proven itself stable
enough to use in an operational environment (I use it myself for the
Amateur Radio Elmers Resource Directory). It will work with any
standard version of Perl 4 or 5. You may obtain the latest copy from:
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/auto-faq3.3.part1.gz
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/auto-faq3.3.part2.gz
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/auto-faq3.3.part3.gz
No response to call for Help Desk volunteers or Beta-testers
------------------------------------------------------------
I'm disappointed in the total lack of volunteers beyond just Ian Kluft
and myself. The failure to recruit such volunteers has weighed heavily
in my decisions to put 4.0 development on indefinite hiatus and not
include any further enhancements (which may introduce bugs) into 3.3.
auto-faq 4.0 development on indefinite hiatus
---------------------------------------------
I was contemplating a significantly-enhanced 4.0 version of auto-faq.
Though it would probably be backwards-compatible with 3.x configuration
files, it would use enhanced features of Perl 5 such as
object-orientation (and hence won't be compatible with Perl 4.036 or
earlier). Other ideas I considered include:
- Eliminating the problematic inews dependency by incorporating the
Perl 5 "Nntp" package to communicate with the news server directly.
- Allowing static and dynamic header customization through
object-oriented inheritance; auto-faq 3.x allows this through a quite
well-conceived, but still somewhat complex and kludgey (sorry, Ian! :-)
extension mechanism that takes advantage of the interchangeability of
variables and functions in Perl 4.
- Capture the HTML and PGP tool integration rules and target
dependencies described above as a seamless user option (possibly
incorporating an interface to the Unix "make" utility)
- Providing either a compatibility mode or conversion utility to allow
FAQ maintainers who are currently using Jon Kamens' post_faq.pl
utility to easily migrate to auto-faq (I consider both auto-faq
and post_faq.pl to be excellent utilities, though clearly they
have slightly different features and meet slightly different needs).
I initially planned to begin work on this during summer 1996.
However, the total lack of additional suggestions, as well as any
Help-Desk or Beta-tester volunteers, has made me reconsider this
(probably non-trivial) effort. I can only conclude that news-posted
FAQ's are rapidly becoming old-hat in the face of the explosive growth
of the World-Wide Web and that the few remaining FAQ maintainers that
post to news are quite satisfied with the current versions of existing
tools.
--
Paul W. Schleck
auto-faq-maint@novia.net
auto-faq Maintainer