ICSI Speech FAQ:
1.4 How do I add a new answer to the FAQ?

Each FAQ answer is stored in a separate small file in the directory

/n/www/export/http/htdocs/speech/faq/anssrc/

The files are essentially just the HTML of the body of the page that is linked from the faq index, but there is a small amount of additional structured data. This allows the automatic index generation to produce a final HTML file with the correct question number at the top, and to link it in to the main page with the author ID and date.

To create a new answer file (which can be an alternative answer to an existing question), perform the following steps:

• Create a new file in /n/www/export/http/htdocs/speech/faq/anssrc/ called something like myans.xml . The file stem can be anything (as long as it is unique!); the extension must be xml. After re-making the FAQ, this will be the basis of the file myans.html in the parent faq/ directory.
• Insert the template file /n/www/export/http/htdocs/speech/faq/FAQA.xml into your new file. This sets up the basic framework, indicating the fields to be filled in.
• Copy the exact text of the question you are answering into the TITLE field, just as it appears in the ICSI_SPEECH_FAQ file. The match has to be exact because this is how the automatic index building knows to link this answer to the appropriate question in the FAQ index. (If the title in an answer file doesn't match any of the questions in ICSI_SPEECH_FAQ, the answer is put in under an 'Uncategorized' heading at the bottom of the FAQ index).
• Put in your authorID (e.g. your unix userID) and the date into the appropriate fields. These are used as the link tag in the index file.
• Put in the body of the answer as HTML. This can be very simple - just plain text with <P> tags to separate paragraphs.
• You can put in links to other FAQ answers by referring to them as "myans.html" in a standard HTML HREF. This is the advantage of having arbitrary file names, rather than automatically-generated ones.
• When you've finished the file, save it. It's a good idea to check it in under RCS (C-x v i) so that changes can be tracked.
• From the Unix command line, execute "make" in the main faq/ directory. This scans the anssrc/ directory, converts all the *.xml files to *.html, and rebuilds the faq/index.html file to point to them all.
• Check your new page in a web browser to see that your new page formats as intended. If not, go back, edit the XML, then do "make" again.
• Congratulations! You just made the world a better place by contributing a lasting, re-usable piece of knowledge. We thank you!

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Generated by build-faq-index on Tue Mar 24 16:18:13 PDT 2009