ps documents Re: [fitsbits] Re: FITS vis a vis XML

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Steve Allen wrote:

> On Tue 1999-12-21T09:24:22 +0100, Lucio Chiappetti hath writ:
> > I find ludicrous a comment which contains things like :
> >
> > "I also had problems downloading one of the specifications (the Users Guide)
> [...]
> 
> grabbed the User's Guide and found that it had been formatted with a
> truly ancient version of dvips which had not followed the Adobe
> Document Structuring Coventions.  [...]

Haven't checked that recently. I believe I know enough FITS to use my old
printed version of the documents, and check on-line single pages in the HTML
version at http://archive.stsci.edu/fits/fits_standard/ in case of doubts

> Document Structuring Coventions.  That makes it hard to browse with
> web-based tools.  

> For the sake of the PostScript-challenged it would not hurt to
> re-convert this and also to provide it as Adobe PDF.

It depends what are the purposes of a document. I am a strong supporter
of Ockham's razor : file structures non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem. I can in general envisage three purposes and usages :

 - the editing of the document. This is a business for a restricted
   team of authors, and the choice of format is their own (Latex, Word
   or whatever ; converters exist for the formats below). These sort of
   documents need not to be made public.

 - the printing of a paper hardcopy. For this ftp retrieval of a postscript
   version is the best. Can be printed with just an lpr commands.

 - the on-line browsing. For this HTML is the obvious choice. And
   converters to HTML do exist, if one is not writing natively in it.
   Again no extra s/w needed but a plain browser.
   
   I would consider bad practice using ps as a format for reading documents
   online.

I would not mind if pdf is supplied as an addition, provided the ps version
does not disappear (I willingly never bothered to install a pdf reader on my
own workstation).

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Lucio Chiappetti - IFCTR/CNR - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)      
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