Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:20:52 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: stuart henderson <stuart@internationalschool.co.uk>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: FreeBSD Documenters <doc@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: ps2pdf (was: newbies mailing list) Message-ID: <19980304102052.13296@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <34FBE0CB.C1697F2D@internationalschool.co.uk>; from stuart henderson on Tue, Mar 03, 1998 at 10:51:55AM %2B0000 References: <199803030441.VAA11558@const.> <34FBE0CB.C1697F2D@internationalschool.co.uk>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, 3 March 1998 at 10:51:55 +0000, stuart henderson wrote:
>> IMHO, HTML is the best choice for this documentation. HTML is
>> accessible from nearly everywhere, space efficient and by definition,
>> hypertext.
>
>> If a plain text version is necessary for ease of printing and access
>> where a browser isn't available, use the existing SGML tools to
>> produce HTML and text from one base.
>
> At the moment, it's not very easy to get at the handbook or FAQ offline
> until FreeBSD is installed. It would probably be more useful for many
> people to be able to read it first - certainly in countries where phone
> calls have to be paid for, online reading isn't a very sensible option.
>
> I think at the very least, there should be a (preferably .zip) archive
> of the HTML versions for offline reading.
>
> A printable version as well would be nice: .ps is not a very good choice
> because very few people in the Windows world know about ghostscript -
> RTF/Word/PDF all have the advantage of being printer-independent and
> usable on a reasonably standard configuration.
I'm picking on your message to answer mainly because it's the last in
sequence in my incoming mail :-) I don't have time to answer each
message blow-by-blow, and I'm not sure it would be the best way to do
it if I did. I have a number of points to make:
1. This is really an issue to discuss in -doc, not in -chat. I'm
following up there.
2. The ASCII (latin1) version of the handbook doesn't contain any
high-bit-set characters. The only unusual character it contains
is a ^H (backspace), which even on DOS impact printers will create
a bolder impression. In UNIX, you can (and I do) remove it with
sed 's:.^H::g'. I suppose it would make sense to include a
stripped version on the next CD-ROM, like I'm planning to put an
ASCII version of "The Complete FreeBSD".
3. ASCII is *terrible* to read. One of the reasons I'm still
wondering whether it's worth the trouble is that it's almost
illegible. So much of the information is in the fonts and the
character sizes; without this information, it's often very
difficult to understand.
4. It is possible to install groff on DOS. I've never done it, and I
have no intention of introducing Microsoft to my workspace, but
people should at least be made aware of the possibility.
5. I think HTML stinks as a documentation format. It's barely
acceptable as a web format, and the attempts I've made to use it
for Real Documents have been painful. Compare
http://www.lemis.com/errata-2.html and
ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-2.ps, both of which
ostensibly are the same document. About the only advantage it has
is that just about everybody has a reader.
BTW, can't you display .html files with Microsoft-based browsers?
I've probably forgotten something here. I may follow up.
Greg
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980304102052.13296>