Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de
Message-Id: <97Jul5.154153gmt+0100.16644@internet01.amc.de>
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 14:46:09 +0100
From: Chris Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: galbiati AT cse DOT ogi DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: DJGPP is in WAY too many piece
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Phil Galbiati wrote:

(Good points snipped)

> 1) Converting README.1ST to HTML, and including a Table of
>    Contents at the top.  I think that people are more prone to
>    poke around with their web browsers than with their text
>    editors.

As long as it's in both formats.  Some people may use a web
browser for FTP (some people use one for mail - oops!) but 
certainly not all.  And once it's on the home machine it's
more common to load a file into a text editor (or Windows
Notepad) than to run up a web browser for it.

And I'll emphasise a brief purpose statement and the contents 
at the top of it, so that people realise (a) that this isn't
the instructions for what to do after you've installed and (b)
they can see immediately what to look at.

> 2) Including a copy of the converted README.HTM in at least one
>    (if not all) of the "required" binary zips.

I'll extend this.  I'd like to see both README.* and an 
INSTALL.TXT in all of the zip files.  The GNU source 
distributions do this already.  The INSTALL.TXT need not be
large, just a reminder of using -d on PKUNZIP and where
to install it (for instance the code DJGPP stuff needs to be
in the DJGPP root directory while some other things like sources
can be anywhere).

> 3) Making sure that all references to FTP & web sites in the FAQ,
>    the mini-FAQ, and the README, are fully qualified (i.e. that they 
>    include the "ftp://" or "http://" protocol specifiers).  This
>    will allow Netscape users to simply click on the reference to
>    view the pertainant document.  It wouldn't hurt if we did the same
>    with all of our posts as well. 

And it doesn't harm most non-Netscape users.  In fact, I think 
most people who give actual references (as opposed to "look for
it on a SimTelNet mirror) do give propper URLs.

> 4) Posting the Weekly mini-FAQ twice per week rather than once, to
>    increase the likelihood of it being present on any given news
>    server on any given day (it has usually disappeared from my
>    server by Thursday afternoon).

I'd rather it wasn't much more frequent, but I can live with it
twice weekly...

Chris C