1.1. Fresh@LDP

Only one new document this week, but a very impressive one: Binh Nguyen released the first official version of the Linux Dictionary. With nearly 9000 entries, this is one of the most complete references currently available.

1.2. Proposed new documents

These new ideas this week:

• Mark Hoebeke wants to target the novice developers HOWTO with a mini-HOWTO about the GNU auto-tools, such as automake, autoconf and libtoolize. His proposal was received very positively.
• Carsten Kolassa wants to write what he would like to call the Network-Programming HOWTO, discussing among other topics how to write to and read from a socket, how to write simple servers and sniffers. His primary goal is to write in C, but Carsten plans on adding C++, Perl and Java examples as well.
• Machtelt Garrels wants to contribute a document called LDAP Operations HOWTO, which is intended to link the LDAP HOWTO with the LDAP Implementation HOWTO.

1.3. Submitted for review

• Another revision of Howard Shane's Scanner-HOWTO is available for review.
• If you don't have a local Linux User Group yet, click through to the Linux User Group HOWTO. Note that this document is now maintained by Rick Moen, who took over from Kendall Clark.

2.1. Guides

• Our Spanish colleagues finished the revision of the Guía de Programación de Módulos del Núcleo Linux. The original document, the Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide is authored by Peter J. Salzman and Ori Pomerantz; the Spanish translation is the work of Rubén Melcón Fariña, assisted by Ã"scar Sanz Lorenzo and Francisco Javier Fernández.

3.1. merge of mini-HOWTOs

Greg Ferguson sent in an update indicating that the list of HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs have been merged and there is just one master (combined) list in the HOWTO-INDEX vs. the current two and only one set of tar files per document variant vs. the current two.

3.2. LDP Author Guide/DocBook, Xml, Jade etc.

Simon Anderson was frustrated with the LDP author guide and DocBook, and wondered why the LDP used DocBook even though "Everyone reads HOWTOs in html anyway". In response Chris Karakas explained why the separation of presentation of content from the content itself was important. Several people had suggestions for Simon Anderson to deal with the problems that he was facing. Tabatha also mentioned that the author guide was being reviewed and revamped by Emma Jane Hogbin.