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Some broken links in docs on x.cygwin.com


I was looking at the Cygwin/X (compiled docs) FAQ on the website, to
see if Cygwin esp. the Cygwin/X stuff would be useful for me. Anyway,
noticed a few broken links and thought it'd be helpful if I notified
somebody of them. Hope this mailing list is a suitable venue... I went
into the #cygwinx IRC channel to enquire, but nobody was around at the
time. My search of the mailing-list archive didn't bring up anything
similar. My *nix experience level means I'm not - technically - able
to provide a patch, myself.

Best,

- Adam.


I've split it into two sections a) Broken links in the FAQ and other
docs provided on the website and b) Comments on links in the website's
compiled docs of format: text.

== Broken links in the FAQ and other docs provided on the website ==

Page: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Title: Cygwin/X Frequently Asked Questions | version: Last updated: 2004-04-04 
Section title: 10.8. Where can I get help for installing DocBook on Cygwin?
Summary: Broken link to external page - page not found. HTML version
(and other formats of course, if they're all same version)

Current link in FAQ:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/cygbook1.html
Most recent Wayback Archive of that Compuserve docbook page, is dated
Oct 20, 2004 [http://web.archive.org/web/20041020081458/http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/cygbook1.html].

However, a Google search for the author cited in the tutorial brings
up Markus Hoenicka's _new_ website including the Cygwin guide linked
from the FAQ, therein:
http://www.mhoenicka.de/software/sgml/sgmlnt.html.
The direct link to the HTML version of that guide (the linked
compuserve webpage was to the HTML version) is:
http://www.mhoenicka.de/software/sgml/tutorial/book1.html
Probably easier to use that than the Waybacked one; since if he
updates it in the future that'd obviously be the one he updated. :)

Note: The same webpage is linked separately from the Cygwin Docs
contributors guide at: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/cg/docs-docbook.html

..........I was going to send a note that I'd found that broken link
so it could be fixed. Since I'd installed a Firefox extension that
checked page links, I thought it might be useful to check for & notify
y'all of any other broken links I could  find. I didn't have time to
locate replacement URLs for them all, since some are technical pages
it's probably for the best so more *nix-savvy users can locate the
pages; avoiding errors.

FAQ 'Section 4.1.2. I there a way to add a layout to the list of autodetected?'
Microsoft Global Dev website.  - link broken

FAQ 'Section 6.6. I get no login screen for Solaris'
At 'Note:, ...'X Server manual page' and 'Fonts in X11R6.7' are both
broken links.

FAQ 'Section 7.4. I have a specific error message that is not
addressed in the Error and Warning Messages section.'
The 'Cygwin/X mailing list' hyperlink (its the second link) is broken.

FAQ 'Section 7.5 My bug report the Cygwin/X mailing list was ignored.
What do I do now?'
The 'search the mailing list archives' link is broken.

FAQ 'Section 11.2 What licenses apply to the X Window System source code?' 
The 'certified by the Free Software Foundation' link is broken

There's a few broken links in the User Guide (HTML version)
[http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-remote-session.html] too:
accessed from link at http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/.
At Chapter 4. Under 'Note:' the 'X Server manual page' and 'X Server
XDMCP Options' are both broken links - returning a 404 error.

Also, the Contributors Guide includes "Chapter 4 - Website Maintenance". 
[http://x.cygwin.com/docs/cg/website.html]. Some potential
contributors might be dissuaded from helping out / thinking their
input would be well-received though, given that the total content if
that chapter is a single word and exclamation mark: ''Foo!'.

== Links in the text version of the docs on the website ==

The text version of all three documents on the website have the links
supposedly at the bottom Cygwin/X Contributor's Guide, Cygwin/X
Frequently Asked Questions, Cygwin/X User's Guide.
Links are relative in the case of other sections of the documentation
and the few external links are absolute links. The relative ones are
all of the type (example from users guide
[http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-x-ug.txt]:
11. file://localhost/mnt/d/ago/cygwin-x-doc/build/ug/dump.html#using-starting-sh

If this is machine-specific with its mount point i.e. specific to the
machine it was made on, then this isn't particularly helpful. If not
then little harm was caused in my confusedly bringing it up ;).

Also, some of the external links are referenced well in the above
documentation, e.g. Chapter 4. Using Cygwin/X includes "You may wish
to read the [46]Linux XDMCP HOWTO or the
[47]X Server XDMCP Options for more information.". The
references/endnotes then neatly give the URLs for no.'s 47 & 48.
But... some referenced links such as 36 & 48, however, repeat the
links already given in the body of the document; which give a numbered
reference with the URL just given. I presume this is because the
anchor tags label the link a URL rather than page title, currently.

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