From: almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch (Werner Almesberger)
Subject: Re: Annoying Linux developer habits.
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:41:03 GMT

In article <C0LFHK.F2E@ais.org> sno@ais.org (Stephen Opal) writes:
> Lilo is only distributed with postscript documentation.

No, the documentation comes in

  - LaTeX (lilo.n.tar.Z, doc/doc.tex)
  - PostScript (lilo.n.ps.Z)
  - ASCII (lilo.n.tar.Z, README)

The ASCII documentation is admittedly not quite as comprehensive as the
LaTeX or PostScript versions (which are, by the way, identical).

Why I use LaTeX and not some other format (WordPerfect, Framemaker, Word,
ATK, WordStar, PageMaker, Showcase, ...) ? Because a) (La)TeX is prevalent
in academia, b) everybody can get it for free, c) it's available for many
operating systems, d) it's powerful and generates excellent output, e) it's
device-independent, f) I like TeX.

Why I use LaTeX and not plain ASCII ? Because a) long ASCII documents are
hard to read, b) manual formatting is a pain, c) ASCII drawings are hard to
create and usually don't look good, d) I'd have to do it all in LaTeX
anyway if this should ever become part of a printed document, e) I like
TeX.

> Several other packages have made their "current" documentation only
> available in TeX. 

A lot of freely FTPable software has documentation exclusively in (La)TeX
and it's very unlikely that anybody will convert it to ASCII, so LILO
won't be your last encounter with LateX.

Of course, ASCII has a few advantages too: it is on-line readable and it's
easy to search for text in it. However, I hope nobody is seriously con-
sidering reading more than very few pages of text on-line (and there is
xdvi, if you're really desparate) and searching in LaTeX code and reading
the relevant section is also possible, although not very convenient.

The main advantage of using anything more advanced than ASCII is print
quality and readability. Anybody who has ever read both the ASCII and the
LaTeX FAQ will surely agree.

I think there are only three solutions for those who can't or don't want
to install LaTeX or don't own a graphics printer and don't have access to
a LaTeX installation at work or at school and don't have access to a
PostScript printer and don't know anybody who could print the documenta-
tion for them:

  1) fix any of the above problems, e.g. install LaTeX, buy a better
     printer, join a computer club, ... ;-)
  2) get access to *any* graphics printer, get somebody on the net to
     generate output for it and print that. (It would probably already
     help a lot if somebody could generate HP-DJ output for the most
     common LaTeX documents and upload it.)
  3) write a LaTeX to ASCII converter (with a few restrictions, of
     course)

I doubt that there are many people who currently use Linux and are
truly unable to print LaTeX documentation - they probably simply don't
try hard enough.

> WE NEED ASCII!!!  One of the biggest complaints in this newsgroup is from
> people chastising users who can't seem to read the available info/faq.  I
> think we could go a long way in minimizing this "problem" by making the
> current documentation available to the lowest common denominator.

Introductory documentation is typically written in ASCII. That the more
complete part is written in a decent format isn't a good excuse for not
reading the READMEs and FAQs :-)

- Werner
-- 
   _________________________________________________________________________
  / Werner Almesberger, ETH Zuerich, CH      almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch /
 /_IFW_A44__Tel._+41_1_254_7213___________________________________________/
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux