🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct5.190630.26539@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>, audley@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Christopher D Audley) writes:
>In article <tlm.718249912@scl1.al.iastate.edu> tlm@iastate.edu (Dr. T.L. Marchioro II) writes:
>>                  ... perhaps I can offer a better solution to Louis' original
>>question --- i.e. a solution with pagenumbering, headers, etc. which runs on 
>>any NeXT --- which at least "calms the waters" on one aspect of this 
>>question.  Why not have everyone put their documentation in troff??
>
>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?

My guess is that this is twofold:  (1) someone would have to set up DL so
that it can index PS files.  To my knowledge (which may not be complete...)
right now, indexing PS doesn't work the way you would want it to.  Even so,
you wouldn't be able to easily open the PS file to the page where the word
you searched for appears...or, for that matter, find the next word.  So, it
would seem to me that until DL and Preview get better, you lose a lot by
going to PS format.  And, (2) PS files are very big compared to, say, a
WriteNow document.  They can be stored compressed, but then you don't have
access to the info inside.  (What would be great, though, is to set things
up so that a ".psZ" file would be zcatted into Preview...hmmm...)  Those are
the reasons that are most obvious to me; I'm sure others can add to the list.


Later,
-Don Yacktman