In article <3kk4le$3j6 at apakabar.cc.columbia.edu> mr48 at namaste.cc.columbia.edu (Mark Reboul) writes:
> It seems clear there are technological benefits to GCG users' having
> the package documentation available via WWW, perhaps with access
> limited to users at each licensed institution, or even possibly with
> any licensed site free to give wide-open access to any and all comers
> in the world (if in fact that were ever to be authorized by GCG).
>> But everyone thinking about this notion ought to keep in mind the
> distinct possibility (I would go so far as to call it a *fact*) that,
> if either type of increased access results in decreased revenue for
> GCG in terms of manual sales lost, then GCG will raise their license
> fees to make up the difference.
There is an added problem. Users could get very attached to their WWW
versions of the manuals, but GCG have been changing the way the manual
is produced. The User Guide, for example, no longer comes with source text
in the package (because it is written in a completely different way now).
The WPI Guide never had available source (because it was never produced
in the old way).
GenHelp could also be a candidate for change in future - at present on Unix
it is trying to look exactly like a VMS help file. As more users migrate
from VMS to Unix that is going to become harder to use.
That means that existing ways of producing the WWW versions of documentation
are likely to break in the future.
--
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Peter Rice | Informatics Division
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