Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 21:49:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: Brian Somers <brian@awfulhak.org> Cc: kleon@bellsouth.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Handbook - ascii form?? Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.970621214054.15956A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <199706220348.EAA07445@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
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I find it truly incredible that the collective talent here cannot produce and get onto a server a plain text copy of the handbook. Suggestions that people who may be downloading the handbook to a dos/Win system use a simple sed command to get rid of the backspaces or whatever are, it seems to me, greatly misplaced. They are also inappropriate for people new to unix, and this may well be a major category of people who download the handbook. There are also reports that people who ask for a plain text, or ascii, version of the handbook are told they are jerks who don't understand latin1 etc.etc.etc. I think anyone who thinks the handbook is available in plain text hasn't tried to download it. But then, maybe I just don't get it. Now here we have a nice offer from someone who will convert a troff version to plain text. How about taking him up on it? Annelise On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, Brian Somers wrote: > > Howdy, > > > > I just tried to download the latest version of the Handbook in ascii > > (and latin1)[don't have postscript printer]. > > > > Anyway, the file is not straight text (extranious overprint, backspace, > > etc characters) under DOS or BSD. This makes it very difficult to RTFM. > > I realize that much works is being done and the handbook is secondary. > > When can a clean ascii copy be expected? > > > > If you can upload the groff'd copy I'll run the ascii version and send > > it back. > > > > Thanks for your time > > Just sed the backspaces out: > > $ sed 's/^H.//g' handbook.latin1 >handbook.ascii > > (type ^v^h to get a real ^H) > > > Keith > > kleon@bellsouth.net > > -- > Brian <brian@awfulhak.org>, <brian@freebsd.org> > <http://www.awfulhak.org>; > Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour.... > >
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