Re: [PLUG] DSL saga webpage

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 12:32:44AM -0400, Doug Crompton wrote:
> I am sorry it sounds horrible, I did not mean it that way. With a great
> deal of info on the web now in PDF format I cannot understand why the
> Linux community is not able to read it? I publish many things in PDF. It
> is the best way to convert and make available to a large audience a
> platform independent truthful representation of an original document. HTML
> stinks for this.
> 
> I will look at it and see how it looks HTML. Can you read that or do you
> want text?

You've missed my point. I don't care any more. I'm quite capable of
reading PDF, but I'm not going to go to the trouble unless it's
information I really want (say, PostScript manuals).

Had I been able to get something useful from a URL you posted, I
might have cared.

My point is that, with web-publishing (which this is; it's
accessible via port 80), the onus is upon the *publisher* to make
their documents accessible, or people won't bother accessing them
(you know, unless they're porn or warez). This doesn't even come
close to making up for the fact that you can publish where millions
can see it for a minute fraction of the cost that you would incur
were you publishing by traditional means.

A secondary point is that you're making a classic mistake that
web-publishing, even in HTML-esque formats, has for a long time (and
still does): you're placing form above content. What about your
document formatting is so special that having it look some way other
than *exactly* the way you laid it out would damage its useful
*content*?

Cf, if you like, http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/design.html. It doesn't
talk about PDF specifically, but the generalized knowledge applies.
(Note that jwz can be presumed to know what he's talking about; he
did write Unix netscape through version 3 by himself, including much
of the mail- and news-reading that got used in all platforms'
versions.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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