From bob@RATTLESNAKE.COM Sun Mar 25 08:35:30 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 25 Mar 2001 16:35:30 -0000 Received: (qmail 2422 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2001 16:35:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 25 Mar 2001 16:35:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO megalith.rattlesnake.com) (140.186.114.245) by mta2 with SMTP; 25 Mar 2001 16:35:27 -0000 Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.111) for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:35:26 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:35:26 -0500 (EST) To: seidensticker@msn.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-reply-to: <99l2m8+4r97@eGroups.com> (seidensticker@msn.com) Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Marketing lojban Reply-to: bob@rattlesnake.com References: <99l2m8+4r97@eGroups.com> X-eGroups-From: "Robert J. Chassell" From: "Robert J. Chassell" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 6187 Some people drive cars. This means they are situationally blind. This means that the document you create should work well when converted to speech by a text-to-speech program. Some people like to work efficiently with their online documents; they don't want to waste time. This means that the document you create should work well with incremental search and incremental regexp searches. Some people work on machines with a slow and expensive connections to the Internet. This means that the document you create should work not waste space. Some people work on machines running Microsoft software. Other people work on machines running Sun Microsystems software. Some work on IBM mainframaes. Others run on Intel chips with a GNU environment and a Linux kernel. This means that the document you create should work in all kinds of envrionments. At the moment, there are two formats that fit all these criteria: * one that does a better job typesetting for printed copies * one that does a poorer job typesetting, but not bad Both do good jobs for creating * efficient, on line documents, * documents that can be read by a Web browser such as Microsoft Internet Exploper or Netscape * documents that can be listened to by the situationally or otherwise blind * documents that run on mainframes, Solaris machines, Microsoft operating systems, BSD operating systems, GNU/Linux. * documents that can be converted to PDF, .dvi, PostScript, as well, as mentioned, HTML and Info. Note that we know people will *not* create multiple output formats unless it is easy to do so. They will not spend extra effort. These input formats make the creation of multiple output formats trivial. A problem is that both these formats require writers to think about what they are doing. It is hard to write both for the blind and for the sighted. It is hard to write both for people who are going to read a printed book and for those who are going to work efficiently on line. This difficulty is why single-format documents tend to predominate. There is no way around it, except to ask writers to think about what they are doing, and to ask them to work so as to look at the different output formats frequently, so they can track what they are doing. Put another way: WYSIWYG editors by definition cannot properly handle WYHIWYG (What You Hear I What You Get). Similarly, people who have learned to browse HTML based Web pages, whether through hearing or sight, have learned to work and base their habits on an environment in which efficient navigation is impossible. This is because HTML does not necessarily tell you which cross references lead to other sections within a document, and which lead outside of it, to the wider web. The two formats that do a good job are Texinfo and DocBook. Texinfo is better if you want printing as well as everything else. DocBook is now being reimplemented in XML rather than SGML and has gained a considerable amount of support among various documentation groups. (I expect its printed output format to improve markedly over the next few years. Incidentally, there are programs to convert from one format to the other, but I cannot say how good they are.) LaTeX is splendid for typesetting. It does a really good job. For typesetting, it is better than either DocBook or Texinfo. Unfortunately, LaTeX' focus on typesetting means it does a poor job at dealing with car drivers, people who try to work hard on line, and other people like that. Microsoft Word is widely used but the format is wasteful of space and those who use it are voluntarily committing themselves to a prison. Obviously, there are advantages to living in a prison, but there are also penalties. Some people prefer to choose vendors, prefer to hire whomever they choose to revise programs, prefer compatibility over decade-long time periods, prefer to work on reliable, secure, and powerful systems, prefer to save money ... So not everyone chooses the Microsoft Word format. Overall, for lojban purposes, Texinfo is the best. You can readily edit it using an integrated environment that run under Microsoft Windows, under Solaris, on mainframes, on BSD systems, and on GNU/Linux systems. You can then create different output formats for different situations. DocBook is number two. As with Texinfo, you can edit XML documents on systems running Microsoft Windows or Solaris, on mainframes, on BSD systems, and on GNU/Linux systems. And you can create different output formats for different circumstances. I expect that lojban sites will provide a large portion, possible all, of the various output formats, so a person who choses to print a PDF file can print it rather than a PostScript file or .dvi file. A person who likes to browse or print a Web page can do that. A person who wants to work efficiently on line can choose an easy-to-navigate format. A person who pays by the minute for a download can choose a frugal format. These should all be made available. -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com