More complex to create than a FAQ in the approved format? Not significantly.
We techies tend to overestimate the importance of such differences. The fact
is that from Joe & Jane Sixpack's point of view, anything more structured than
plain text is about equally intimidating. Besides, there are already decent
freeware authoring tools that hook up to standard word processors, and will be
more.
> 2. Pages are difficult to serve. Not everybody has access to an HTTP
> server, and some access providers will be hesitant, probably for security
> reasons and/or system load (including disk space) concerns, to provide such
> a server.
If this were true, FTP sites would be rare. Think of httpd as a replacement
for ftpd for a moment. Any argument you could make against the future
pervasiveness of httpd has to include an explanation of why that same argument
didn't make FTP sites and FTP access rare.
> 3. Pages are difficult to convert back to text. With the advent of
> commercial access providers, more people who don't have access to the UNIX
> command line or lynx are on the net. That, in itself, will start to force
> a change in the entire system. It will also mean that saving a Web page as
> text won't be as easy as a lynx -dump, especially for those of us without
> command lines. :)
Mosaic has a "save as text" option. So will anything that wants to
compete with it. End of *that* discussion. :-)
> 4. Pages take time to load. This again involves the unwashed public
> talking to their access providers via modem. Quite often an overloaded
> server will turn Web access into a loitering pain, as we wait for all the
> images to load. I've almost gone to sleep a few times with a image-heavy
> page loading up from a burdened server.
Again, why didn't this problem strangle FTP ten years ago? OK, you're going
to point out that browsing FTP directories that doesn't trigger GIF downloads.
On the other hand, typical serial comm speeds used to be *really* slow
(remember 1200bps modems? hell, remember *300* bps?) I know what WWW waits are
like, and relatively speaking they're no worse than the lag for technologies
that are quite popular, thanks.
> 5. People aren't eager to change. The FAQ mechanisms are in place, and
> there's nothing inherently wrong with them (IMHO, "new & improved" doesn't
> necessarily invalidate the "old & robust"). Why SHOULD we change?
> Popularity alone isn't enough; people not only have to have the New Toy,
> but they also need to be convinced why their Old Toy is worth abandoning.
Um, because WWW is easy and fun to use? So much so that it makes the rest
of the net's interface technologies look as antique and creaky as cuneiform
tablets? And, Goddess on high --- if it gives *me* this reaction (me, a
case-hardened hacker with Internet experience going back to 1976) what do
you suppose the difference looks like to the eager newbies on CompuServe
and AOL?
The masses and the market are going to move to WWW. We old hands can lead,
or we can follow, or we can become irrelevant. There are no other choices.
> 6. Internet access isn't uniform. Those with dial-in SLIP or PPP access
> probably have some form of Web browser (NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, MacWeb, et
> al). Those with dial-in terminal access probably have lynx or equivalent
> on their host system. Those with more "traditional" access methods may or
> may not have a browser available to them, but I won't argue that more and
> more of them will as time goes on. But what about those who read
> newsgroups via BBSes? The Internet access, for them, is invisible. They
> don't have Web access, and probably never will through that mechanism.
> Many of them would be too intimidated to get access on their own ... and
> that's assuming they've got a provider they can reach with a local phone
> number. What about them? (Thanks to Graham Stoney for making me think of
> this.)
Ever heard of DOS-Lynx? Slipknot? TIA? Did you know that Telegraphix is
about to release a Web server that speaks RIPscrip? Your "probably never
will" is dead wrong -- the RIPscrip server alone will make sure of that.
Providing WWW access to the unfortunates in the serial-line Slow Zone is a
purely technical problem which *will be solved*. Soon. If you focus on
technical problems, you will miss the true significance of what is going on.
What's really happening. IMNSHO, is this: (a) the world was *ready* for
distributed hypertext, (b) the Web is a damn fine design that materialized
just slightly before its time wrt comm speeds, and (c) there are enough
hackers that have been attracted by the confluence of (a) and (b) that
*software* technical barriers will not and cannot significantly slow its
exponential growth. Consider the trends of the last nine months, the
huge variety of Web- and IP-related access hacks that have materialized
recently, and then argue with this. If you can.
> Assuming we trash the old in favor of the new, I'd guess rtfm & the mirrors
> would become HTTP servers instead of mere ftp servers. Everything would be
> archived there, & people could point their browsers to www.rtfm.mit.edu (or
> whatever). Distribution would be a non sequitur, except for maintaining
> local FAQ's (in which case the ftp server would continue, & mirror/local
> sites would be responsible for pulling down new stuff on demand, or perhaps
> as the result of a period faq-maintainers-announce message).
This is more or less what I expect to see happen in the near term.
> How about providing an example here? I don't see the distinction between
> an FAQ that's "clearly focused on a particular newsgroup" vs. one that's "a
> newsgroup's informational topic." Are you distinguishing between, say, an
> FAQ about Macintosh programming (for the comp.sys.mac.programmer.*
> hierarchy), and an FAQ about group protocol?
Exactly.
> (And let's not assume that every program out there will have a
> Web tap in it. That I don't see happening ... you don't see an ftp program
> that can also serve as a news reader, do you?)
No, it's going to happen in the other direction; Web browsers will swallow
newsreaders, just as they're swallowing FTP and Gopher access now. Consider
lynx 2.4's FTP support (which flat-out obsolesces ftp and ncftp) as a taste
of things to come.
-- Eric S. Raymond <esr@locke.ccil.org> WWW: //www.thyrsus.com/~esr/home.html
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