Online Documentation

[Ralph W. Reid]

My preferences in order:

man pages--can be included in existing manual system so they are quick
and easy to look up

html--can include some built-in formatting, and final formatting into
readable text can be performed by my choice of web browser

plain text--quite readable and usable--basically just about equal to
html formatting for me if the formatting is okay (reasonable length
lines, etc.)

info--usable, but I have found that plowing through layers and layers
of info pages can be time consuming if large amounts of info needs to
be plowed through in order to find what I want

postscript--originally created for print formatting, this format would
have to be run through a postscript interpreter to be readable--does
not seem practical unless I need to dump it to a postscript printer,
which would result in printed material which I could not read anyway

PDF--Pretty D**n Fraked!!!  I would have to run it through pdftotext
just to be able to read it at all, and the formatting might or might
not survive the translation.  Please don't use this format if at all
possible!

HTH, and have a _great_ weekend!

On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 09:58:41AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
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> t curious.
> 
> What format do you all like your online electronic documentation in?  I
> mean as choices plain text, HTML, postscript, PDF, info (compiled from
> teXinfo), man pages, etc.
> 
> I'm asking this partly because I'm fixin' to build some Slackware based
> packages for Exim and others and have a choice as to what kind of
> documentation to include.  In particular, Exim has I think four
> different formats available for their documentation and would be added
> separately when installed.  I really don't wanna bloat the package with
> four different formats so hence my question.  I'm personally torn
> between HTML and info.  The HTML versions are easiest to include where
> info, you have to be careful with the global dir file.
> 
> Anyway, I just thought I'd ask to get other people's ideas on this
> subject.  I have a Slackware compatible package for Exim 4.62 ready to
> go as soon as I work out the manual preference.  I could actually leave
> it as is with their plain text format and let the end user fetch the
> other formats on their own.  I will also have Slack packages for Speech
> Dispatcher and Speechd-up available shortly.
> 
> - -- 
> HolmesGrown Solutions
> The best solutions for the best price!
> http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
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-- 
Ralph.  N6BNO.  Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O.
rreid at sunset.net  http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid
...passing through The City of Internet at the speed of light!
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