Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Marketing lojban

From: "Robert J. Chassell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 11:35:26 -0500 (EST)

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 [email-masked]
Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com