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Texinfo? Please no!



   For those of us without access to such tools, a formatting language,
   ANY formatting language, makes a file less than useless.

Every document has some sort of formatting language.  Spaces and tabs
are a form of formatting language.

Every general distribution will use spaces and tabs (or multiple
spaces instead of tabs) and be readable on an ASCII terminal.

The purpose of using a powerful formatting language is to save time
and resources.  It is much easier to produce single-font,
ASCII-terminal readable and also to produce high quality typeset books
of different sizes documents if you use a formatting language designed
for the purpose.  Otherwise, you have to format docs twice or else
makedo with less readable types of output.

I would like to see readable (in contrast to recent LJs) 8.5 by 11
inch printed documents and readable on-line text.  Moreover, I expect
that after a year or two, rates of change for the contents of some
documents will slow down, and demand will pick up.  At that time, it
will be reasonable to print 250 or more books at once.  It makes sense
to have a choice between printing in a 6 by 9 inch format as well as
an 8.5 by 11 inch format.  (Bookstores and many readers prefer regular
sized books to large format books.)  There is no reason a human should
spend time reformatting an 8.5 by 11 inch document to a 6 by 9 inch
document when a machine can do it.

With a formatting language such as Texinfo, you get plain ASCII, Info,
8.5 by 11 inch typeset and 6 by 9 inch typeset documentation from the
same, single source file, plus tables of contents, cross references,
indices, etc. in those formats that use them.  Saves time to work on
contents rather than formatting.

Hence my suggestion.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        (413) 298-4725 or (617) 253-8568 or
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (617) 876-3296 (for messages)