On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Phil Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> Tony, I like your suggestions, too. > > But what this all comes down to IMHO is: > > - The PofOp has evolved past its original design spec (size, > screen vs. paper). > > - It is thus less useful than it could be > > - Is it worth an investment on IBM's part to fix it? > If so, then a real tech writer would approach it by talking to users > (like, starting with reading this thread) and figuring out how it really > gets used, then try reformatted samples to see what works. > > Alas, that seems ... unlikely, given IBM's current woes. > What I would really like would likely be anathema to IBM. But I would like them to place the "source" for the PoPS, and other manuals, on some site where anybody could get it for local editing/rendering. License it with cc-by-nc-aa (Creative Commons, Shared Alike, non-Commercial) as defined here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ and then let _us_ put it into our own format. What would be really fantastic, to me, would be if said source were in a source control system such as "git" or Subversion so that as IBM made changes, we could do a "pull" to get just the changes (high tech version of TNLs). I know that _I_ would at list _try_ to write a program to "convert" the "mark up" language to something like "markdown" (simple) or maybe even some TeX (for the LaTex document processor) variant mark up. If it goes to something like TeX then rendering it into other things like HTML, PDF, ebook, is much easier. Ref : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX -- The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled culinary vessel will not achieve 100 degrees on the Celsius scale. Maranatha! <>< John McKown
