;login: newsletter status

[King Ables]

>From article <BZS.91Mar9183937 at world.std.com>, by bzs at world.std.com (Barry Shein):
> 
> IF ;login: were published electronically, what format would be best?

That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?  Plain text is the only rational
answer (for everybody), I think.  I know of sites that have whatever 
standard troff came with their machine, but since they don't have a
CAT phototypesetter, it's useless to them (yes, they can nroff and print
that... but that is about the same as plain text if you ask me...).

I'd love to be able to say postscript, but I've been very disappointed
with the (few) postscript previewers I've ever seen.  Even then, you have
to assume someone has a bitmaped display or a postscript printer.  I think
some people would be shocked at the "primitive" unix sites that are
still around out there... ADM terminals and 68000 boxes...

The only way to keep EVERYBODY happy is to use plain text... and these
are the people who are even CAPABLE of receiving it, which isn't everybody.

Someone else brought up a good point as well.  Do we consider ;login a
privilege of membership or is it public information.  If it truly is
to be viewed as public (and CS becomes the privilege of membership),
then posting the nroff'ed version to the net seems reasonable.  And 
people could check a box on their membership application/renewal that
says whether a hard-copy mailing of ;login was necessary.  This way,
those who didn't have e-mail or news could still get it.

Personally, I don't think there have been many cases of delays, this
past one was kind of interesting, but it's not an on-going problem.
Other than the amount of paper used, I don't see a need for a change
(and I like to keep old issues anyway, and if I were to pitch them,
I would certainly pitch them in the recycle bin).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
King Ables                    Micro Electronics and Computer Technology Corp.
ables at mcc.com                 3500 W. Balcones Center Drive
+1 512 338 3749               Austin, TX  78759
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We don't inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.