Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:56:36 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Jeremy Lea <reg@shale.csir.co.za>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ps2pdf (was: newbies mailing list) Message-ID: <19980316105636.62142@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <19980311182033.60785@shale.csir.co.za>; from Jeremy Lea on Wed, Mar 11, 1998 at 06:20:33PM %2B0200 References: <199803030441.VAA11558@const.> <34FBE0CB.C1697F2D@internationalschool.co.uk> <19980304102052.13296@freebie.lemis.com> <19980304131036.44077@shale.csir.co.za> <19980306191229.06394@freebie.lemis.com> <19980311182033.60785@shale.csir.co.za>
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On Wed, 11 March 1998 at 18:20:33 +0200, Jeremy Lea wrote: > Hi... > > On Fri, Mar 06, 1998 at 07:12:29PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: >> Obviously the work with sed has to be >> done before making the CD. > > If it's a one line patch then shouldn't it just go into bsd.doc.mk and > happen every time? Probably. That wasn't the question I was addressing. > I've noticed that people in the US tend to think very much in terms of the > CD distribution of FreeBSD. Out in the backwaters of this virtual urban > sprawl the CD is not very easy to come by and ordering it is quite pricey. > People here tend to think a lot more in terms of FTP. There are 10 times as > many mirrors outside the US as inside... Well, I'm not exactly in the middle of Manhattan here, either, and I definitely think more in terms of CD-ROMs for the same reasons you propose for ftp. >> No problems there. My problem is that there has to be something >> better than the current html, which, as other people have observed, is >> difficult to handle. >> >> While writing my book, I spent a lot of time reading the handbook, >> initially the HTML version. It wasn't until I went to reading the >> ASCII version that I discovered a whole lot of stuff that I hadn't >> found in the HTML. This is more a problem of the handbook than the >> medium, but the medium encourages it: excellent random access and >> appalling sequential access. I'd suggest that we try to reduce the >> number of pages and increase their size (and still keep the links, of >> course). One page per chapter sounds reasonable. > > I agree... Personally I think HTML is a mess. It should never have been a > content based markup format... it should have been a platform independent > display format and left the content stuff to background SGML like docbook. > But well you can't change history. HTML and it's successors are here to > stay. > > Making the HTML pages longer is a good idea. So, I think, is making the > printable versions shorter (one section per file). But I think there is more > needed in terms of restructuring the documents, and pitching them at a > broader audience. An idea I liked was that used in the online Java book at > java.sun.com, which uses "trails", which you can follow through. Maybe > something like this would work. In the online version it would be hypertext > and in the printed version it could use small icons. There could be a "new > user", "ISP", "workstation", "Quake" :), etc. trails for the various > segments of the users to walk though, so that experienced users could skip > the hand-holding... I'd have to think the idea through a bit with a copy of > the handbook in front of me. This sounds like a very good idea. I'm also sure it's very difficult to get right. Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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