Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 10:51:20 -0500
From: cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab (Logical Language Group)
Message-Id: <9110311551.AA05297@daily.grebyn.com>
To: jay@markv.com
Subject: Re:  texinfo version of the minilesson
Cc: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com
Status: RO

I have no objection to anyone putting the mini-lesson in any format.
We cannot commit to the tex-info format in any greater degree for several
reasons:
- less than 20% of our market is active on any computer net
- even smaller a percentage uses Unix and related machines
- not even all such machines properly support tex-info.  For example, I can
print a dvi file only with great difficulty:  I have to get my sysadmin
to run dvi2ps on another machine because it is too much of a pain to get
it running on the main one, and takes up a lot of space for only one customer,
(he will charge me beaucoup bucks if I ask him to do this too often, as well).
I then have to pay him 25c/pg to print it and mail it to me (a joke), or 
download it in ps format which is about 6 times the length of the original.
I then have to print it on my HP-III with postscript card, which does about
1 pg/2mins instead of the normal 8 pg/min.  In short, i do this only if I have
to.  Meanwhile, I'd guess that half the people on Lojban List are like And Rosta
- they don;t even know how to use uudecode.

- I run primarily on an MS-DOS machine, as do the largest percent of our
audience with computers, using MS-Word, which is a user-friendly WYSIWYG
interface.  I simply cannot understand/accept why anyonw would fiddle with
TeX stuff, where they have to print-and-fiddi]le every step of the way.
- The second largest of our computer audiences is for the Mac, which none of
these approaches addresses.  But they have Hypercard, which is a much more
well-known and widespread hypertext system.  We do have one software item for
the Hypercard, but our support for it is mediocre, since I can;t even
easily
copy disks.

- Finally, the excuse that bugs Bob the most - we are losing money hand-over-
fist, and FSF idealism doesn't bring in money unless you can find corporate
sponsors and the like.  At the moment, we are doing what we can to put stuff
in machine readable unformatted form.  We'll have to wait until finances 
improve to try anything more.

- As for exchanging services for converting formats, we can make no promises
due to finances.  Generally, we hope to give volunteer credits spread over
those who volunteer, from the little amount we may make on other people's
purchases.  Thus far, there have been no such profits.  We hope to change
this, if only by clearly isolating paying people from non-paying, and cutting
the latter off if they DON'T volunteer.  But you are welcome to offer services
and ask for a specific credit in return; the committe that judges I suspect 
will be more likely to grant discounts rather than giving materials - it is no
longer my decision.

lojbab@grebyn.com