At 02:33 AM 11/21/96 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Why would you be in a minority?  Plain ascii is obviously the way to go.  Why
>on earth would one NEED the fancy schmancy formatting?  It's nice to have it
>offered so you don't need to go through the file in your word processor and
>underline this or bold up that or italicize t'other, I suppose, but what you
>really need is the manual so you can GET it without having to jump through
all
>sorts of hoops.
>
 
I'm Mr Gadgeteer, have a PPro200 at home, and love the latest computer
gimmick to come down the pike (WHATEVER it is...). Nevertheless, I have to
agree here. ASCII stands for "American Standard Code for Information
Interchange". Maybe the fact that it's a standard means something. In
addition, ASCII can be compressed into a tighter file than anything else,
and can be transferred/read/printed by any combination of machines that can
communicate at all.
 
I'll bet there are people hosting mailing lists who are running 286's, old
Macs, even some foreign computers with proprietary software. An ASCII
manual can be mailed in a readable format. If the manual hit the street in
ASCII first, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD COULD READ IT AT ONCE. Distribute in
ASCII, and we all get it (and leave you alone); the prettier formats can be
distributed at leisure. As opposed to catering to 75% of the listowners
(Word), then 15% of the listowners (WP5.1), then "the rest" with ASCII.
 
My $.02
 
Philo
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