Date:	Fri, 18 Nov 94 12:32:10 JST
From:	Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To:	A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs1 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject:	Docs: why not plain understandable ascii?

A.APPLEYARD flamed as follows:

     Someone wrote:-
     >Hello! Where can I ftp '/djgpp/src/gdb-4.12/gdb/doc/*.tex' in
     '*.ps' or
   '*.dvi' format? ( I have some problems with TeX under dos :-( )

     Aaron Ucko <UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU> replied on Wed 16 Nov 1994 20:03:55
   -0500 (CDT) (Subject: Re: Docs):-
     > What sort of problem? gTeX works fine for me ... If you

     Everybody hasn't got all these funny word processing packages!

"Stephen Turnbull" <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp> (that's ME!) got
mad as hell and decided not to take any more.  He replies as follows:

"TeX is not a good idea, it's not a 'funny word processing package',
it is Truth, Justice, and the American Way."  Yes, I see your
ancestors didn't make it across the big puddle, but 2 out of 3 ought
to be good enough for you.
    Seriously, everybody *does* have TeX, at least in the Unix world.
It says right in the readme that this is a package for people who want
to program under DOS as if they were using Unix.  It doesn't say that
it attempts to fix all the problems of DOS, such as lack of fork() and
TeX.
    Furthermore, having one source produce both nice postscript for
the printer (Oh, EX-cuuze ME!  I bet you don't have Ghostscript,
either!) *and* "hypertext" (you can argue about whether it's real
hypertext) is a great help to both maintainers of the docs and the
users as well IMHO.

   Can't this info be sent out as plain legible ascii!?!? djgpp is

Of course it can.  I think somebody who goes by the handle of ANTHONY
APPLEYARD just volunteered to do the initial translation *and*
maintain the docs as they get updated by the FSF.  (The last time
someone complained about the docs, it was that they weren't in
postscript format.  That was fixed, temporarily anyway, by volunteers
who had the same problem.  Not me---I don't use the printed manuals,
just the Info versions.  But I cheered, and helped in a minor way by
suggesting a rationalization of the .zip naming scheme.  Very minor,
obviously.  One contributes what one has time for.)

   enough to cope with without having to wrestle also with the
   intricacies of the Tex system and its various dialects. Often

Agreed, this is not a system for people who don't want to make a
serious investment in Unix-izing their lifestyles.  Nobody ever said
it was.
    It's all GPL or less stringent, so noone will object if you "fix"
it (I don't think it's broken, so I'm not going to put in the effort).

   people lack the money or the hard disk room or the need for these
   word processing packages. I get tired of having to manually edit
   Tex matter into readable ascii text. Today an important article

Ah, finally, I can be of some use to you.  There is a package called
"detex" available on Simtel and mirrors, I believe in ...msdos/tex.
It was not very good the time I tried it; it may have improved, or you
can fix it yourself.  Again, I'm not gonna do it: I think that "detex"
is to "documentation" as "gelding" is to "stallion".  But it's your
host, do what you like on it.

   (not about Gnu C) circulated by email came in Microsoft Word and I
   had to manually edit it into ascii, since I have Word Perfect 5 for

Doesn't WP 5 import MS Word files?  The flyer I got (years ago) said
it did.  Things circulated by email should not require software that isn't
universal; docs distributed intended to be used with a large system
which includes the document processor (which is free software) is a
different kettle of fish entirely.

   DOS and not Microsoft Word and I don't use Windows unless I have
   to.

Something we can agree on!

Still steaming, but willing to kiss and make up,

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                           Stephen Turnbull                            |
|     University of Tsukuba, Institute of Socio-Economic Planning       |
|          Tennodai 1-chome 1--1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305 JAPAN            |
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|                                                                       |
|                Founder and CEO, Skinny Boy Associates                 |
|               Mechanism Design and Social Engineering                 |
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