-------- On Fri, Jun 27 1997 16:10 CDT John Goerzen writes: John, I agree with the overall contents of your remarks. Just some remarks: > * HTML cannot do very much with formatting. [...] > * HTML cannot be easily printed. [...] > * HTML cannot be easily grepped. [...]
I fully agree. [...] > I think that other formats have the following problems: > * PostScript makes very nice printed output, but it difficult to > search and requires a fairly expensive graphical monitor to be > able to read on-screen reasonably. And it is generally too large for its contents. > * LaTeX also makes nice printed output and can be converted to > HTML as well as other formats, but such conversion on-the-fly is > not practical due to the huge size of the LaTeX system. And the conversion is generally poor. > * GNU Info has an awkward interface and is difficult to search. > It is also nearly impossible to print an entire manual from the > files in the info directory. This is not meant to be. If you want to print something, convert the .texi files to dvi! > * Manpages are portable, searchable, and produce nice printed ouput > with man -t. However, for very long manuals, they are not > approprriate. I agree. > I would suggest either of the following: > * DVI format. It can be converted to HTML (I think...) and plain Nope, not possible. In DVI you have lost the structure information. > text on-the-fly. It can also be converted to PostScript and > have very nice printed documentation. Yes. > searchable. Downside: conversion to PostScript requires > significant disk resources (fonts!) and can be a lengthy process. > On second thought, maybe DVI isn't the best choice... :-) No. DVI is not font-independent (unfortunately). [...] > All packages should ideally provide manpages (although there are a few > exceptions). Rewrite this to: `All packages provide manpages'. > Packages providing additional documentation should use > GNU info format or LinuxDoc/SGML format. There should be a script or GNU texinfo (in the source package) > program available to convert SGML to HTML on-the-fly (shouldn't be > hard since we already have the tools to do that). Various other > documentation provided by the upstream author should be converted to > SGML if possible; if not, it should be included untouched. Probably yes, although I don't exactly love SGML. > Just to summarize: I believe that HTML is a VERY BAD choice for > unification of documentation for the reasons outlined above. Agreed. David -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
