Re: what can I do to help?
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 07:30:05PM -0300, Donald Teed wrote:
> I can see a need to create output for the screen
> and for paper. Gentoo deals with print needs within
> the HTML generated, by using an additional xsl
> transformer. Are there Debian users who only have
Debian use SGML. HTML is a subset of SGML, so there is not
a lot of difference between Gentoo and Debian approach.
I am sure Gentoo could write a xsl transformer to generate
plain-text output.
> a teletype terminal and cannot view formatted HTML?
> (They look like this:
> http://www.computerhistory.org/VisibleStorage/images/102637051_lg.jpg
> )
Plain-text files are ten times more convenient to read that HTML or PDF
because you can process them arbitrarily with standard UNIX tool and
your favorite editor. How many browsers support searching inside a
HTML document made of several files and links ?
Furthermore a teletype terminal can display HTML, using tools like
'lynx -dump', but actually, Debian supporting S390 mainframes that have
no screen nor keyboard, I would not be surprised if someone read the
documentation on a dumb terminal.
> I don't want to cause any heads to explode, but I
> need to understand the boundaries. In other words,
> is there anything wrong with the assumptions Gentoo
> has made about generating documentation and
> its available formats?
Yes, but it is not a limitation of their design, they just do not
realise the benefit of plain text documents.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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