Re: Attracting newbies
On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 10:09:30PM -0500, Michael Pobega wrote:
> The way I see it all that we'll need is HTML, PDF, and plain text. Plain
> text is the easiest to read through a terminal window, and it should be
> how we write the original documentation. Once we finish a full plain
> text version we can worry about converting it to other formats.
>
> HTML is nice for viewing over the internet, and whenever possible I
> prefer HTML over PDF. Especially since you can tie URLs in HTML to other
> points on the page, so that you can link someone back and forth
> throughout a single page quickly and easily.
>
> PDF is good for it's sleekness really, I know nothing about the PDF
> format so I'm going to completely leave this in someone else's hands.
> But since PDF supports images, why don't we add in a few images for the
> PDF version? (Maybe the HTML version, but I really do think that this
> project should be as text based as possible.)
>
Pdf can have internal links as well as a table of contents that one can
click on. On the other hand, one needs X to read it and a postscript
capable printer to print it (yes I know...).
HTML can be read with lynx or mc as long as it doesn't have pictures and
has the advantage that it has links to click through a document to what
one wants.
Plain text, is, well, plain text.
So if we go with plain text +/- simple html, we need a home for it and a
way to work on it.
Isn't it ironic that here we are fitzing around trying to set up a
documentation method when that is what UNIX was designed to do as its
primary role when it was invented?
Doug.
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