🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Oct5.235713.2907@leland.Stanford.EDU> spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola) writes:

>Christopher D Audley writes
>> > Why not have everyone put their documentation in troff??
>> 

Actually, I suggested this :-)

>> Why not just use PostScript.  Authors of documentation can
>> use any word processing/page layout program they want and
>> save it as PostScript.  Its not like people are typically
>> going to want to be able to modify documentation they receive.
>> The original author can retain the document in whatever format
>> he wishes for latter modification. 

>> Every NeXTstep program has the ability to create PostScript
>> files and every NeXT can read them.  Why does there seem to
>> be resistence to using it as the standard format of documentation?

>I think that the main problem with PostScript is that you can't drop  
>the files into DL.

>Edit .rtf and .rtfd files seem ideal for distributing docs, and  
>everyone gets Edit.  The main constraint there is the lack of page  
>breaks and page numbering (and perhaps, headers/footers).  This would  
>seem to be fairly trivial to add to Edit, and shouldn't step on too  
>many outside developers' toes, since the resulting app would still be  
>pretty limited.  If NeXT can't find the time to do it itself, perhaps  
>they could provide the source to somebody who would volunteer to do  
>it as a public service?

Not to beat on this issue (personally, I don't really care *all that much*)
but people were all complaining that (1) they wanted to index things for
DL and (2) they wanted headers, footers, etc. and then complaints started
about unbundling apps, NeXT's devotion to its old customers, etc. etc. It
just seems to me that for those people who want (1) and (2) that troff is
a reasonable possibility. I recognize it's not the greatest thing around, 
IT JUST DOES (1) and (2) AND IS FREE WITH ALL NeXTs.  Myself, I'd prefer
TeX, but it doesn't satisfy (1) and most people with smaller discs don't
run it (and even if you have a big disc, why should you install TeX (or 
even the now defunct ReadNow, or ---- ugh! --- the Demo of FrameMaker)
just so you can read documentation?  As for adding the features described
above to Edit, great idea(!) but the thought that NeXT would let out
the code to someone can do it flies in the face of experience thus far.
Wouldn't it be easier to just make a little app in IB that drove troff
so people wouldn't actually have to deal with troff directly?  

If a developer doesn't care about the (1) and (2) combination then by all
means use something else. I'm just trying to point out another possibility.

Tom