🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <61060002@acf3.NYU.EDU> kesich@acf3.NYU.EDU
(John Kesich,321wwh,998-3047,) writes:

>Why post faq-diffs to comp.text.tex?
>
>Since the faq is posted anyway, doesn't posting faq-diffs only chew up
>additional disk space & bandwidth?  Or is there some advantage to
>producing the latest faq by applying the diffs to the previous version
>instead of simply saving the latest faq?

The point of the FAQ is for people to know the answers it contains,
in order to cut down on the "boring" volume of the newsgroup.

However, the FAQ changes fairly regularly.  In order to save time,
those who have read the FAQ before can just skim the list of changes
("diffs") to keep on top of what's in the FAQ.  This is a lot
quicker than reading the whole thing.

Or, in other words, some storage media---like my brain---are much
easier to update by a list of diffs than by scanning a whole new
copy :-)

- Paul Colley
University:  colley@qucis.queensu.ca
Home:        pacolley@ember.uucp   watmath!ember!pacolley  +1 613 545 3807
"Quantum Mechanics:  The dreams stuff is made of"    - Ken Burnside