From bob@rattlesnake.com Fri Aug 30 16:42:32 2002 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:42:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from megalith.rattlesnake.com ([140.186.114.245] helo=localhost) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.05) id 17kvPI-0000bY-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:42:29 -0700 Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.114) Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:41:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:41:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Robert J. Chassell" To: jkominek@miranda.org CC: lojban-list@lojban.org In-reply-to: <20020827124718.C11178@miranda.org> (message from Jay F Kominek on Tue, 27 Aug 2002 12:47:18 -0600) Subject: Re: [lojban] JL & LK References: <20020827031227.B11178@miranda.org> <20020827164414.GM20007@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <20020827124718.C11178@miranda.org> X-archive-position: 853 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: bob@rattlesnake.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list ... I don't think it would be excessive to expect such people to view the PDF. Free software is available... Yes, viewing software is available ... but none that I know of has risen to the quality of Info in 1984 -- that is to say, none of the tools with which I am familiar provide easy-to-use, high quality naviagation using regexps or make it really easy to extract and quote a part of the document in a email message. If such tools exist (and I mean tools that you have the freedom to study and redistribute as well as use; I have no time for tools that restrict me and others), please tell me. As far as I can figure out, PDF is designed by and for people who typeset and print. PDF was designed for a world that is passing; it is not designed for the modern world. ... The only requirement is a windowing system of some sort. How well does PDF work with an acoustic desktop? (I am referring to a good acoustic desktop, not a simple screen reader, to a desktop such as Emacspeak that enables a blind person to work as efficiently as a sighted person, with text-to-speech rates up to 500 words per minute that an experienced user can understand, the ability to listen to different parts of the same document, cut and paste among such parts, as well as with other documents, send and receive email, listen to a calender, handle networking, and such.) The PDF tools with which I am familiar are `viewers' not listeners. I don't know of any that work in a decent acoustic windowing system. Please settle on a format that is general, that works for typesetting and printing and for creating Web pages and for creating efficent on-line documents, and works both for sighted people and for the blind (and I count auto drivers as `situationally blind', since I want them looking at the road, not at a computer screen with Lojban material on it). Please note that the markup language you choose makes a difference, because the markup language enables different kinds of action. Some years ago, I tried to convert the `Red Book' sources to Texinfo, but I found that the markup language used led to habits of typesetting that made it too difficult for me to make the conversion in the time that I had. A single Texinfo document can be converted to many different output formats; consequently an author must restrain what he or she does. The constraints are different when you aim for only one output format. Texinfo imposes restraints that enable you to typeset and print a regular book (using PDF if you wish), navigate efficiently line in Info, or create Web pages. (An example of an online issue: from the point of view of someone from the early 1980s, HTML is instrinsically broken. Because of its design, you can never create an HTML document that you can navigate as efficiently as an Info document. This is because HTML does not distinguish between references to another part of the same document and references to node outside the document. So your search mechanism can work well only within the current page; or you must depend on a preconstructed index.) Nonethless, in spite of its contrainsts you can write complex works in Texinfo, such the book describing Emacs Calc. That book talks about algebraic simplificiation, matrixes, and more. The source can easily be converted to PostScript or PDF and printed, or put up on a Web site, or converted to Info. XML is not as good as Texinfo; the sources are harder to read or listen to than Texinfo sources, but it is a popular mark up language and would be an OK choice, too. Either could be extended to handle Lojban, both for the sighted and the blind. -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com bob@gnu.org Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8