Re: Texinfo? Please no!

[David Cortesi <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!infmx!godzilla!cortesi>]

> Bob Chassell wrote re TEX,
>
> >I mention all this because I am urging lojbab to adopt this formatting
> >language since it is so useful.
>
> To which Bruce Gilson replied:
>
> For those of us without access to such tools, a formatting language,
> ANY formatting language, makes a file less than useless. Please do
> NOT use anything but straight ASCII for anything that might go out for
> general distribution.

I second that: anything distributed on a general electronic medium
has to be in the least common denominator, plain ascii (*). Anyone
who receives it has _some_ kind of formatter, but you cannot
predict which.  And no formatter has more than 25% of any market
(that is being generous to Word).  For example, I could pour
the minilesson into a Frame document and index it at least as fast
as Bob could TEXify it. (wanna race?)

Further reason: One of the few areas in which la lojbangirz could
offer a clear added value is in the presentation of these materials
in printed form.  If all you got for free was flat ascii with no
graphics -- but what you could buy from the group was nicely
typeset and paginated -- you would have an incentive to pay money
for that which you had already received electronically.

Which is something that Bob L. has been looking for, yes?
So I'd encourage lojbab to move into DTP, but then to guard the
formatted files (whatever their language) as proprietary, and
release only the flat text for free distribution.

Dave Cortesi

(*) I found even the minimal indenting and page numbers in the
mini-lesson to have negative utility.  I read and responded to it
on-line using a text editor, and of course the page numbers did
not correspond to screen pages, and showed up in the middle of
every other screen page as a distraction.

If I wanted to format it using some local tool, I would first have
to edit it and _remove_ the extra linespaces and the page numbers.