Proposed addition to the mail section of the handbook

[Bill Moran]

Josef El-Rayes wrote:
> Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> wrote:
> 
>>In all seriousness, I'm not totally confident with docbook 
>>yet, so suggestions
>>on all levels are appreciated.  (at least I got make to 
>>stop complaining ;)
> 
> hy, i had a look at your patch and i have following suggestions:
> 
> line 27: &man.send-pr.1; which creates a link to the
> send-pr manualpage.
> 
> line 45: the dot should not be inside the apostrophes.
> 
> line 48: Execute the following commands as root. <- shouldn't
> this end with ':' instead of '.'?
> 
> line 47+48: mark ssmtp port up with
> <filename role="package">mail/ssmtp</filename>
> 
> line 51: i think it is common practice in the handbook
> to propose "make install clean" for installations.
> 
> line 53: i would markup ssmtp with application tag
> 
> line 26+32: why is there a different identing? as far
> as i can see, both lines are on same level.
> 
> line 56-60: what about indenting here?
> 
> line 71: s/ssmpt/ssmtp
> 
> line 72: it is "manpage" not "man page".
> 
> in my opinion your patch is too long. i think the same
> effect could be achieved by 30% of the lines. you do not
> need to do such intense arguing why to use.
> for me 3 lines, a note that there is a port, that allows
> users to avoid sendmail, when they want to use send-pr
> would suffice.
> 
> i also think that installing & configuring ssmtp is a trivial task,
> is there really a need to donate a whole page to this?
> 
> what about something like this:
> 
> <note><para>If you just want to pass your email to your isp's mail relay,
>   and want to avoid installing a mail transfer agent, try <filename
>   role="package">mail/ssmtp</filename>, which is a easy to set up
>   program, that fulfills this task.</para></note>.
>   
> 
> dont feel offended, this is just my view.

Not offended.  All good points.

While I can't argue your 4-line patch logic, where would it go that it
would be discoverable information?  The advantage of my patch is that
it creates a section that a user will be able to easily find.  I also
suspect (although I could be wrong) that the section I created may be
expanded to explain how to achieve the same goal using sendmail, which
(to me) is a good idea, since sendmail comes with FreeBSD.

I'm not arguing "I'm right, you're wrong."  But you have good points
that make me wonder what the best way to handle this is, so I'm throwing
back more information to see if a consesnsus can be reached.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com