well, the simple ASCII text isn't the problem. its the interface over which I am viewing it (ssh using vt200). every time I navigate up or down in a man file, the session redraws the screen and that forces the screen reader to read from the first line or simply read the last line (whichis the "--more:" at the bottom). that and some of the extended attributes (bold face, etc.) may not be read correctly by the screen reader on my end of the ssh session.
text based PDF files usually hide these attributes (except where they have strictly a visual effect) and css or HTML presents such attributes visual only (unless I use a specific command to read the specific attribute). since most of these attributes are for formatting purposes, they usually get ignored by my screen reader when viewed as a css, html or PDF document. I just had a thought about subject lines. in my case, having the website of OpenBSD in there actually made it a lot easier for me to dump these mails into their own folder, and also bypass some of gmail's buggy spam handlers. of course, if I need to, I can drop the web address out of the subject line (it seems like it might create more noise if it remains). -eric On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:25 AM, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > Hi Eric, > > Eric Oyen wrote on Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 07:57:59AM -0700: > >> its too bad there is no way to convert back from html. > > That wouldn't be impossible to write; but it would be an awful > lot of work, probably at least two weeks of work for somebody > very familiar with the mandoc(1) internals like kristaps@ or > myself. > > The main reason not even to attempt to write that back-converter > is that i expect it would almost certainly not help you at all, > whereas much of the help we could give you could probably be put > together with a few minutes of work once we understand what exactly > the problems really are. Not all suggestions will be useful, > and trying them out and understanding them will almost certainly > take more than a few minutes of work on your part, but still... > > The crucial point for getting correct backwards conversion > would be to always have the right "class" attributes in every > HTML element. If you would edit the HTML code with some random > WYSIWYG editor, those attributes would almost certainly not get > added when adding new elements, would probably get lost when > changing existing elements, and i doubt that you could even hear > them in the first place. > > Besides, even if your HTML editor had a way to add the required > markup, you would still have to learn what markup is required. > That's just the same difficulty as learning real mdoc(7) syntax - > except that you would do the same in a different syntax than > everybody else, which is not likely to make getting help any easier. > >> that would make life a lot easier for some of us who can code >> there (not me). > > If you want to contribute to manuals, you really have to edit > mdoc(7) files. At least so far, i can't imagine any shortcut. > > So what you need to figure out is: > What do you need to read and edit the real mdoc(7) files, > directly? Like this one: > > http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/bin/cat/cat.1?rev=1.31;content-type =text%2Fplain > > Editing manuals means editing those, with a plain text editor, > and no editing anything else. > >> still, having options for conversion from the new man format to css, >> html, pdf and others is very nice indeed. the nice thing about a >> properly formatted pdf is that I can use a number of very >> accessible programs to read it. > > I'm still slightly confused that you can read a terribly complicated > format like PDF but a simple format like ASCII text causes problems. > Of course, use whatever works for you, i'm not arguing that! > But technically, it ought to be *MUCH* easier, several magnitudes > of difficulty lower, to make ASCII text accessible than to make PDF > accessible in whatever way required... > > [...] >> I hope no one minds that I shamelessly plug the OpenBSD site >> in the subject line. > > Oh please don't. > That conspiciously looks like cargo cult to me. > And even if it were effective, standard nettiquette is still > much more important (here: use concise, expressive subject lines). > > Whether or not Google lists openbsd.org is mostly irrelevant. > Whatever Google does is not a good reason to do anything > in a different way than in the sane way. > > Yours, > Ingo
