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Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 12:44:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>
To: Wolfram Schneider <wosch@apfel.de>
cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Compress handbook & FAQ
In-Reply-To: <199705191225.OAA00853@campa.panke.de>
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On Mon, 19 May 1997, Wolfram Schneider wrote:

> 
> I think we should commpress the handbook and the FAQ
> by default. Comments?

As one who came to FreeBSD without knowing unix not so long ago, I
think the basic documents should be available (both on the hard drive
and on www.freebsd.org) in uncompressed plain text.

Last time I looked, www.freebsd.org claims to offer the handbook and
FAQ in plain text, but it does not.

These are the critical documents, along with a few others on the
install cd, that new users are going to get and probably print from
dos or Windows.  Doing so should not require knowing how to process the
documents to get them into a readable (searchable) and printable format.

So, one vote for uncompressed plain text.

I realize that with plain text the formatting that attempts to distinguish
among commands, variables, and so forth is lost, a fact that might be
kept in mind when drafting documentation.

	Annelise