From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Robert J. Chassell" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Gtk patch version 3, part 1 Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 16:38:17 +0000 (UTC) Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200301011944.h01Jim0U011400@stubby.bodenonline.com> <5xy95zk2n1.fsf@kfs2.cua.dk> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1041784792 721 80.91.224.249 (5 Jan 2003 16:39:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 16:39:52 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18VDoV-0000BU-00 for ; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 17:39:51 +0100 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 18VDsA-0006NP-00 for ; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 17:43:38 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10.13) id 18VDnl-0003sg-03 for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 11:39:05 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.10.13) id 18VDnX-0003s1-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 11:38:51 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.10.13) id 18VDnV-0003rZ-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 11:38:50 -0500 Original-Received: from megalith.rattlesnake.com ([140.186.114.245] helo=localhost) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10.13) id 18VDnT-0003qx-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2003 11:38:48 -0500 Original-Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.114) Sun, 5 Jan 2003 16:38:17 +0000 (UTC) Original-To: storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) In-reply-to: <5xy95zk2n1.fsf@kfs2.cua.dk> (storm@cua.dk) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:10497 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:10497 "Robert J. Chassell" writes: > > Yes. If it is not on your machine, you may not be able to access it: > > Well if it is not on your machine -- you definitely cannot access it > without accessing the Internet. > > That is false! I do not access over the Internet most of the material > that is not on my machine. You must be living in a rich and different > world! Mostly, I get software and documentation from CDs. It would > take me over 500 hours to download the Debian CDs that I use. The basic statement is not false! If the document is not on your machine, you cannot access it locally. That is not true! I can and often do access documents and programs locally that are not on my machine. I put in a CD. A CD is less convenient than accessing the document on my machine, but it is local. ... If I have to choose between swapping CDs or visiting a URL, I'd choose the URL. This means you have a fast and inexpensive Internet connection. I envy you. If I have a choice between spending a great deal of time visiting a URL or spending one-hundreth that time downloading from a local CD, I use the CD. But if the file you need is on a CD of yours, why didn't you install it locally in the first place? Because I don't know that I want it -- often I don't know that the document exists. The only part of my Debian CD set that is on my local machine is the table of contents. I'm arguing about files which ARE NOT AVAILABLE LOCALLY. What's wrong about specifying a URL where you can access it? As a user, you are free(!) to follow or ignore the URL. Because you should plan to create documents that can be made available locally. If you specify a URL, a GNU distributor is not likely to put that document on a CD or on a hard drive. The distributor probably does not ever know about the document. If you create a situation in which the document fails to reach the user, you have told the user you do not think it worth providing resources to them. I fully agree that having an local, well-written info file is much better than having to rely on a remote HTML or PDF document. That is the whole point. If you make it a policy that a remote document substitutes for a local document, then everyone loses. This is because many of the GNU distributors and hackers have cheap, convenient, and fast Internet access for themselves and do not have correspondents who live in Bennington, VT, USA or in Cameroon, in Africa, correspondents whose Internet connections are slow and expensive. Such distributors and hackers often have no reason to think of the rest of us. But in my experience, you cannot rely on any specific documentation to be available locally -- unless you include that documentation as part of your own software distribution -- and even in that case, there's no guarantee that whoever puts your software into a distribution will also include the docs.... That is true; but the key point is that whoever puts your software into a distribution is much more likely to include documentation if you provide it to them than if you do not provide it to them. Exactly! The real issue is to write the necessary documentation and include it in the emacs distribution. Until that's done, I don't see what's wrong with supplying a URL where you can find the "best docs currently available" . It is very wrong supply a URL rather than the documentation to which it points. The reason is that supplying just the URL reduces the motivation many people have to create local documentation. I possess the contents of URLs on my local machine: often it is in an inefficient HTML format rather than plain text or Texinfo, but it better than none. None is what you are actually talking about for many people if the document is not part of a CD distribution or on a local hard disk. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc bob@rattlesnake.com