[7897] in testers
Re: dvips and outreach
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Abbott)
Tue Mar 10 11:09:27 2009
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:02:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tim Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
To: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
cc: testers@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <200903100633.n2A6XR6W025244@outgoing.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0903100941040.11542@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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In the case of dvips, I suspect most users will be able to figure it out
before they find any documentation we'd write on the matter; dvips does
indicate that it is producing "file.ps".
That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a stock answer on the topic.
-Tim Abbott
On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, John Hawkinson wrote:
> When hacking on tex documents, I'm entirely used to
>
> dvips file
>
> to print file.dvi. Under debathena, this produces file.ps.
>
> There seem to be considerable resistance to changing this,
> since it's more and more the default on more and more tex
> distributions. I can't say I buy this argument, but that's
> ancillary.
>
> What are we doing to educate users about differences like these?
>
> I'm not sure how you solve it.
> If you make a list of hundreds of things changed in DebAthena,
> no one will read it, and users can perhaps google and find it
> after they get frustrated and say, "Oh, well, I can't yell at them
> as loud because they did put it on their web site," but it's
> not actually *helpful*.
>
> You could wrap dvips in a wrapper with a zephyr or a zenity
> message the first time you use it if your .generation is too
> old, but that seems (a) like a lot of work (b) potentially
> unhelpful if people ignore messages the first time, etc.
>
> I assume there is a large set of issues in this category, so I worry
> what the answers are.
>
> --jhawk
>
