Top Document: FAQs: A Suggested Minimal Digest Format Previous Document: News Headers Next Document: 2. Table of Contents The intent of this FAQ is to provide current and future FAQ maintainers with a simple description of a minimal format for FAQs. This minimal format is a simplification of RFC1153 digest format that is sufficient to be compatible with common newsreader digest handling functionality, current practise, and Thomas Fine's "FAQ digest format to HTML" converter which allows more sophisticated viewing on HTML-aware systems such as Mosaic or WWW. There are other more sophisticated formats that you can use, but this is the simplest one that is compatible with a wide range of software that understands digest format. This format is entirely optional. But it is designed to give you the biggest "bang per buck" in terms of existing software compatibility and minimum effort. If you believe that your FAQ can benefit from more sophisticated formats, by all means use them. As such, this FAQ can be simply considered a guide on how to take advantage of some basic digest capabilities in end-user viewing software. Rather than confuse the issue by documenting all of the variation allowed by existing practise and software, this documents a single variant. However, it can be extended by reviewing the documentation for Thomas Fine's FAQ to HTML converter: <http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/faq-format/top.html> This FAQ is written entirely in the minimal digest format, and can be used as an example. You can skip from one section to the next by pressing ^G in many newsreaders, such as rn, trn and strn. This FAQ describes only how FAQ sections should be delimited, and a couple of suggestions for meta-references to such things as FTP or WWW repositories in formats that other tools support. Note to reader software implementors: you should not take this format as gospel, instead, use it as a guide to one minimal format of many more sophisticated ones. You should really be reading RFC1153, Thomas Fine's material, and consulting news.answers for how FAQS are formatted in real life. See "Newsreader/Converter Specifics" for descriptions of how some newsreaders work with digest-like documents. Top Document: FAQs: A Suggested Minimal Digest Format Previous Document: News Headers Next Document: 2. Table of Contents Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: digfaq@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Digest FAQ commentary reception)
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM
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