On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 07:13:13PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > In the "compiled" form of a manual, as long as there is no DRM to stop > you from reading it, everything that matters is plain to see. You see > the contents, and you even see the fonts and indentation that were > selected by the markup. The markup commands, which you don't see, and > any comments in the markup, are far less important than what you do > see. If you can read the published manual, what you see is everything > that really matters.
That is not always true. Some of the document formats you have defined as Transparent include conditionals, loops, and other programming constructs. As an example, have a look at /usr/share/doc/gs/examples/waterfal.ps ; but the same is true for (La)TeX. With such formats, a manual could be written that would exclude all non-relevant system-specific data based on the operating system or kernel it was converted on -- for instance, a manual written in LaTeX that explains installing, configuring, and running a specific program could only include the FreeBSD-specific parts when 'compiled' on a FreeBSD system. In that case, you don't just lose comments and markup constructs, but also content. -- Wouter Verhelst Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org Nederlandstalige Linux-documentatie -- http://nl.linux.org "Stop breathing down my neck." "My breathing is merely a simulation." "So is my neck, stop it anyway!" -- Voyager's EMH versus the Prometheus' EMH, stardate 51462.
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