Re: First Run: Standard FAQL Format

Steve Summit (scs@eskimo.com)
Fri, 26 Nov 1993 14:17:35 -0800

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Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
> So I'm afraid I can't sympathize with the attitude that: "if they want
> it done differently they ought to do it, not tell others how". It's
> just not realistic. I have tried to write some software that will
> automatically convert selected non-standard FAQs into some standard
> that could then be broken into hypertext, but it's not easy -- it
> really should be done when the FAQ is originally written, or not at all.

Part of that attitude is just an attitude (though I happen to
share it), but another part is quite practical: as you say, any
fancy formatting (HTML, pretty fonts, etc.) really should be done
up-front, and not tacked on by trying to postprocess a
plain-ASCII posting.

HTML is a nice format: I'm anxious to create an HTML version of
the comp.lang.c FAQ list, and I'll work on it as soon as I can.
I'm not terribly interested in attempts, standardized or
otherwise, at making alternate FAQ list representations
automatically derivable from plain-ASCII versions: such attempts
are always going to compromise the human readability of the
"plain" lists, or achieve only part of the functionality which
the converted-to formats would otherwise offer, or both.

Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com

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