Most newsreaders cope with the format. If you're using a descendent of
rn, try ^G. Gnus, tin, and others can do it too. The FAQ does, I think,
a pretty good explanation how how this interacts with undigestifiers,
Fine's converters and so on.
You don't have to follow it _exactly_, if you read and understand what the
minimal requirements for working with the newsreaders and Fine's converter
are.
} > } > * Do people really use it, and are any other programs readily able to read
} > } > this format?
} > }
} > } Not that I know of, I use it because it makes it easy to move whole
} > } sections around and because it can sort sections alphabetically.
} >
} > Most newsreaders "do" RFC1153, or something conformant with the subset
} > described in the FAQ.
}
} I think the question refered to the Emacs outline format, not to the
} digest format...
}
} Does anyone here use digest ? (should I be using it ?)
Fully RFC1153-compliant digest is _ugly_. And almost nobody uses it for
FAQs. A somewhat larger group of people use something roughly conformant
with my FAQ. I do with my 11 FAQs ;-) And I've had lots of complements
on them - both for being simple and cleanly laid out, and for how well
they get converted by Fine's converter.
I may be biased, but, unless you're assuming that your entire audience is
using MIME or HTML capable newsreaders, I think the minimal format given
is the best bang for the buck. Fine for ASCII, fine for HTML-conversion,
compatible with dozens of newsreaders and add-on undigestifiers. It
ain't the prettiest, but it seems to do the job best.
-- Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_ Phone: Canada 613 832-0541 Latest psroff: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/psroff3.0pl17/* Latest hp2pbm: FTP://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/hp2pbm/*
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