Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:26:05 +1100 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: stuart henderson <stuart@internationalschool.co.uk>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, FreeBSD Documenters <doc@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: ps2pdf (was: newbies mailing list) Message-ID: <19980304112605.61351@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <19980304102052.13296@freebie.lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Wed, Mar 04, 1998 at 10:20:52AM %2B1030 References: <199803030441.VAA11558@const.> <34FBE0CB.C1697F2D@internationalschool.co.uk> <19980304102052.13296@freebie.lemis.com>
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On Wed, Mar 04, 1998 at 10:20:52AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote:
> 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.
Whoo, flag-waving time :-)
For the past 6 years, I have done most of my reading in ASCII with the
occasional addition of ANSI or avatar for colour. I find it the easiest text
to read on screen, and the only kind readable under DOS. It is particularly
convenient for people whose vision is not real good. The only way I've
ever viewed the handbook or faq is on a plain text screen, and I don't feel
particularly deprived. Some texts have a lot of the information in the
fonts, and these do require either a printer or a GUI, or a good
imagination.
Ask me what's most convenient to most people who haven't installed FreeBSD
yet, and I'll guess WinWord2 (many other word processors can read that), or
the conservative RTF that is generated by WinWord2. Ask what's most sure to
be accessible by all people, and it's gotta be ASCII. Neither by itself
provides anything like a good, much less total, solution.
> 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.
I've never liked the idea of giving something and saying oh, by the way,
you'll have to install something to use this. That's my main objection to
depending on things like PDF and Word for windoze environments.
If you want people to use particular software you have to supply it and
instructions, and hope that they have the required disk space and permission
to install it, the resources to run it, and the motivation to go to that length.
> BTW, can't you display .html files with Microsoft-based browsers?
A long thread in an unrelated mailing list recently concluded that to be
as platform independent as possible, HTML files should have names which are
8.3 and all caps.
I prepared to install FreeBSD when running OS/2 and hand-renamed all of the
handbook's HTML files and links so I could use them with the then-available
software.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
find / -name "*.conf" |more
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