Re: Docs format

[Matthew Emmett <memmett@sfu.ca>]

curt@gwis.com (Cowboy) writes:

>  While I agree in principal, and acknowledge that the prefered method does
>  not fit my preference, I submit that there are cases ( such as a crippled
>  system where various word processors will not work ) when ANY meta
>  info within a document is a bad thing.
>
>  One of the strong points of *nix text formatting systems, has been that
>  plain text can be formatted any way the reader likes.
> 
>  Since pure text versions tend to be much smaller than formatted versions,
>  may I suggest that both be available ? It's far easier to format plain text
>  than it is to UN-format a meta document, particularly when the various
>  word processors available will not work for whatever reason.

I strongly disagree that it is easier to "format plain text than it is
to UN-format a meta document".  Take, for example, perl's perldoc.
The documents are "meta-documents", and rendering them to nicely
formatted plain-text is dead simple: 

$ perldoc -t -f splice

However, if I were presented a plain-text version of the above, and I
wanted to format it into another format (man style for example) I'd
have to muddle around and insert the appropriate meta-data.



I guess what I'm saying is, it is easy (IMHO) to go from meta-data to
non meta-data.  If one needs all docs in plain text for when they
cripple their system (how often is that going to happen when the hurd
matures anyways? :), they can simply render them to text!


Matt