Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:25:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: Joseph Stein <joes@spiritone.com> Cc: chuckr@glue.umd.edu, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Handbook - ascii form?? Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.970622235954.19344B-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <199706230649.XAA01232@joes.users.spiritone.com>
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On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, Joseph Stein wrote: > > There aren't any ^H characters in the file, as far as I can tell. > > A hex dump shows all the duplicate letters. > > > > Have you tried downloading handbook.ascii and applying these suggestions? > > >From the web/ftp site, which is where people interested in installing > > FreeBSD get it? > > Yes, I've tried. And it works: > > Here is the output of 'hd' (HexDump) on the first fifty lines of handbook.ascii > that is linked to from http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook by way of > ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/docs/handbook/handbook.ascii: > > > 00000000 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 09 09 09 20 20 20 20 |............ | > 00000010 20 20 20 46 08 46 72 08 72 65 08 65 65 08 65 42 | F.Fr.re.ee.eB| > ^^ ^^ ^^ > ^H ^H ^H > 00000380 08 69 5f 08 72 5f 08 72 5f 08 6f 5f 08 72 20 5f |.i_.r_.r_.o_.r _| > ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ > ^H ^H ^H ^H ^H > > Still not convinced? Here are the first few lines from my hex dump..... 00000000 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 |.......... | 00000010 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 | | 00000020 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 46 46 72 72 65 65 65 | FFrreee| 00000030 65 42 42 53 53 44 44 20 48 48 61 61 6e 6e 64 64 |eBBSSDD HHaanndd| 00000040 62 62 6f 6f 6f 6f 6b 6b 0a 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 |bbooookk.. | and the mirror sites passage.... 00000390 20 6f 66 20 74 68 65 20 6e 75 6d 65 72 6f 75 73 | of the numerous| 000003a0 20 5f 6d 5f 69 5f 72 5f 72 5f 6f 5f 72 20 5f 73 | _m_i_r_r_o_r _s| 000003b0 5f 69 5f 74 5f 65 5f 73 20 28 73 65 63 74 69 6f |_i_t_e_s (sectio| The problem is that yours was downloaded as a binary file, and mine wasn't. > Sorry. I don't mean to have the 'snotty tone', and I just realized that it's > there. But, you've got to remember that the unix system utilities are > written to be used on the old-fashioned 'teletype' printers. That's why > the output is the way it is. The binary file would be, no doubt, okay for printing; not good for viewing on the screen (from dos/Windows, which is the market we're talking about here). > The fact that modern day systems are attached to things like high-speed > modems and laser-jet printers just hasn't come home to unix yet, unless you > have something like 'ghostscript' to run pinch-hitter for you. > > If you'd like me to, I'll be more than happy to run a conversion on the > handbook and post it at ftp://ftp.spiritone.com/pub/users/joes/handbook.zip > (a dos zip file) for you. In fact, it's already there. I think this is exactly what many users would like--for reading/searching on the screen. My version was created by converting the postscript version to ascii and running fmt on it. This is also useful since the length of the lines can be made suitable for printing using the HP Laserjet's lineprinter font. But for hard copy I actually prefer printing html from Netscape, using the chapter-by-chapter versions John Fieber has posted. And I do have apsfilter, so I can always print the postscript version. The fact remains that whether it's downloaded in binary or ascii, there is no plain text version of the handbook available....except on your server! Annelise
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