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Re: FAQ



Tesla List wrote:

> Original Poster: Neon John <johngd-at-bellsouth-dot-net>
>
> I'd suggest just leaving any "art" out rather than wasting bandwidth
> with ASCII hacking.  It seems er, interesting, that in 1999 some
> seem to still worry about how fast someone with a 300 baud modem can
> download.  At some point in time it's time to say "upgrade, be
> inconvenienced or do without!"  I'm saying this as someone who is
> stuck with a phone line that will support all of 24k connect on a
> really good day.
>
> I don't like HTML for the simple reason that it makes it more
> trouble to get everything and then get it to work on the local PC.
> Acrobat/PDF is the modern universal interchange format.  For
> no-hassle operation, Adobe has a nice free reader and a fairly
> inexpensive encoder.  For the free brigade there is GhostScript,
> etc.  The PDF format preserved ALL formatting details.  Even more
> useful for a document that is intended to have wide distribution and
> is therefore subject to alteration by others is the built-in
> security.  One can set a flag when the PDF is created and prevent
> the editing of the file while still allowing the user to view, print
> or cut and paste materials.  Sure, the security isn't airtight (just
> to head off wasted bandwidth on that topic) but it deters the casual
> editors from changing the document and then redistributing it.
>
> If the only excuse for not using PDF is that Acrobat costs real,
> actual money (gasp!), then I'll volunteer to typeset and encode the
> documents here.  I have just about everything Adobe makes.

I planned to have a ZIP archive of the entire website available for
download. That
would eliminate the problem of getting all the files you need that HTML has.

PDF is a good format, but the encoder is windows only last time I looked.
It's a
usefull format, and the reader is free, but I can't get an encoder. If you
want to
make a PDF version when we are done, I'd love to dedicate some disk space
to it. It
should also be noted that some people have trouble with PDF. I know it
seems hard
to believe, but I've had to hand-hold a LOT of people through getting Accrobat
installed. Every box sold in the last 2 years has a web browser installed
allready
and most allready know how to use it. HTML is the standard information
interchange
format of the present day internet. For documents meant to be printed, PDF
and PS
fill the gap.

I agree with the bandwidth argument though. 28K modems are everywhere now.
Making
websites with moderate graphics isn't really going to bog down such a user.
Even
14.4k would download the site I'm envisioning really quickly. PDF would be
slower,
being a graphic format it's a little bigger, but usually not by much. And PDF
prints MUCH nicer for those that like to make hardcopies. Being a Linux
user I can
make Postscript files really easy if people want that. Most non-UNIX people
don't
have the slightest clue what to do with PS though. ;)

For now, I'm building in HTML with the intention of providing a text doc as
well
when it's finnished. If others want to translate it to another format, I
will be
happy to host the docs with the others on my site, and I'm sure people
would mirror
them.

If anyone want's to do pure text docs for the FAQ, please feel free. However,
please format it to 80 columns with hard returns at the end of all the
lines. To
test if it works properly, go to a DOS window and run "type <file> | more".
That
will display the file you tell it to with pauses every screenfull. You can
see what
it will look like that way. HTML files will be wordwrapped by the browsers, you
only need hard returns for paragraph formating and such.

Travis