The man page converter works on the formatted versions of the man
pages, so that we don't have to deal with the various macro packages
as well as eqn and tbl. We create the HTML versions of all of the man
pages and store those somewhere for efficiency (time, not space!).
The converter turns man page and rfc references into anchors.
The rfc converter works on the fly - it retrieves things from our
anonymous ftp repository, uncompresses them, and converts them into
html, turning things that look like rfc references into anchors.
The infogate daemon is a modified version of the info2html script
written by Eelco van Asperen <[email protected]>. Like the rfc
converter, it works on the fly. References look like "tar.info",
which would retrieve the node named "Top" from the file tar.info, or
"tar.info,Why", which refers to the node named "Why".
Have fun, let me know if you find bugs. Since this stuff is available
now, I'd appreciate it if sites could set up their own man page
gateways - we don't have a way to restrict access right now, but I am
somewhat concerned about licensing violations and all that. We plan
to leave the rfc, ien, and emacs info gateways open, and you're
welcome to use them.
It isn't mentioned much in the docs, but the Makefile includes the
commands we use to index the Usenet FAQ's from news.answers. You
might find that useful as well.
--- Steve