[420] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: One small meta-flame and then I'll shut up -- promise
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph E. Droms)
Fri Mar 22 23:02:27 1991
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 22:48:19 EST
From: droms@sol.bucknell.edu (Ralph E. Droms)
To: com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: Barry Shein's message of Fri, 22 Mar 91 15:55:23 -0500 <9103222055.AA16067@world.std.com>
Reply-To: droms@bucknell.edu
We went through the same discussion within the IETF (perhaps even on
the TCP-IP mailing list) w.r.t. ASCII vs. PostScript RFCs. Barry
summarized the advantages of ASCII - displayable w/o fancy graphics,
mungable with other tools. PostScript can provide better graphics,
but is not as portable as one might hope. Anyway, RFCs are still
mostly published in ASCII. I think Barry's right about this
circumstance ... ASCII is probably best unless there are some fancy
pictures included.
What I've taken to doing is providing both ASCII and PostScript
versions of documents. (Actually *three* versions: ASCII, LaTeX
PostScript w/ PostScript fonts [the Computer Modern fonts are
terminally ugly and don't scale well for two- or four-up previewing],
and LaTeX PostScript with Computer Modern fonts [more portable than
PostScript fonts]). Turns out nroff/troff is great for that; one
input file generates both output files. Yeah, sure the words aren't
in the same places - who cares. LaTeX can be persuaded to work like
nroff/troff, but the results are less pleasing.
