I'd like to bring up typography conventions used in the book for discussion.
Right now, we use: [REPLACED TEXT] "This format is used to encapsulate text that is not to be typed as seen or copied-and-pasted." however, we do not have a notation for optional text. In most technical publications, the normal use of square brackets is for optional entries and angle brackets or slanted text for replaceable but required entries. An example has come up in section 7.11. At the top we have: "If a network card is to be configured, decide on the IP address, FQDN, and possible aliases for use in the /etc/hosts file. The syntax is: <IP address> myhost.example.org aliases This would be better as: <IP address> <myhost.example.org> [alias ...] Down in the creation of the hosts file on the same page, we have: [192.168.1.1] [<HOSTNAME>.example.org] [HOSTNAME] This is certainly inconsistent within the page, and the angle brackets do not conform to the typography conventions either. Additionally, in several sections in Chapter 6, we have notations in the contents section like: libasprintf.[a,so] Now, the square brackets here certainly don't mean replaceable text or even optional text. I would propose that we use braces in these cases instead of square brackets to indicate bash-like brace expansion, which is the intended meaning. Overall, this post is about a detail. Perhaps the proposed changes are not worth the effort, but I would like to see them implemented. Discussion? -- Bruce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
