| From: | Avenger <Avenger@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: New SR E-mag |
| Date: | Sun, 1 Dec 1996 14:48:42 +0000 |
<greve@*******.HANSE.DE> writes
>Gurth (gurth@******.NL) wrote:
>: IMHO, it would be best for Fro to bring out both an RTF version and an
>: ASCII one, with the same contents; any pictures included in the RTF file
>: could be zipped up with the ASCII one (before anyone says it, I know most
>: of the common graphic formats can't really be compressed because they
>: already are, but this would just be to keep it all together).
>
>This would suck big time. RTF isn't smaller than Postscript and
>Postscript is a machine INDEPENDED format... there are viewers for
>EVERY OS.
Actualy RTF is smaller than Postscript, what changes this situation is
included graphics. Aside from which, just having a viewer for
postscript does not necessarily mean that it is printable from that
viewer. It also very much depends on the machine type as to wether a
viewer is practicle. I personally, and a large number of people I know,
have no means whatsoever to view, print or edit postscript, it just
comes across as garbaged junk.
>: don't like having to start up my computer every time I want to read the
>: magazine (or whatever) -- and printing an HTML file also doesn't look all
>: that good in my experience.
>
>Huh ???? Just take a web browser to take a look at it and printing it
>is usually no problem at all. HTML is the only format besides
>Postscript and ASCII that is readable by ALL people.
I am aware of a large number of Postscript viewers that are available on
the net, and on a number of magazine cover disks occassionally, however,
your comment about Postscript being a file standard readable by ALL
machines and *all* people is just plain rubbish. I know a *large*
number of people, and software products that *can't read it, and several
of the popular word processor packages will not entertain it unless you
have a postscript printer. Most people have a very basic laser or
inkjet, some only have dot matrix.
As regards web browsers, there are still people who are unable to use
them, some people only have mail accounts and have no need to clutter up
their machine with a browser, or are part of a locked network using mail
rerouting and are unable to use browsers because of firewalls, so HTML
isn't really an option. As for printing the HTML document, I don't have
any problem with it, but prefer to cut and paste into a word processor
for this purpose. However, there are systems that cannot print web
pages... The printer can't cope with it. Especially if a background or
other graphics are included. So this doesn't always work out to be the
most favourable method. The other side of this coin, is for the person
creating the document, to make it look nice, and attractive, to
accurately include graphics into it (if this is an option) to format the
document for some visual effect, takes time. Not everyone has the time
to sit back and create a good looking HTML document, in fact not
everybody understands how to.
It *is* however, as you say, one of the most commonly viewable files.
But there *are* some people who can't. Regarding HTML, unless you are
going to do something *interesting* with it, and create an attractive
document it seems a waste of time, turning a basic text file into an
HTML file, as nothing is really going to be achieved, it'll end up
looking the same.
The only format that is universal and I don't think anyone will argue
the point, is ASCII, but this doesn't allow for any formatting, and just
becomes a text dump, which is not only boring, but also unattractive.
RTF, is *one* of the more universal file types, hence the reason 90
percent of word processors support it. Also, you wrongly imply that RTF
is Windows based, sorry that's not true. OS2 and Macintosh are more than
capable of viewing this file type. I believe that Dos based systems,
UNIX and Linux, may have a problem with it, but I don't use these
systems and have no intention of using them, so I can't say for any
certainty.
--
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