On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 3:13 AM, Peter Hunkeler <p...@gmx.ch> wrote: > >Just out of curiosity, if ePubs of z/OS books provided all the same > functionalities as PDFs (same technical content, same methods for > obtaining/saving, etc.), plus had added benefits such as visual scaling and > accessibility, would you still be so adamant about keeping PDFs? > > Basically I don't care what format is used, what I *do care* is that I > want one format for which there is a reader on just about any platform. I > do not want to keep the same book in different formats for different > platforms. As a matter of fact, there are PDF readers available on all > platforms (at least I now about Linux, iOS, OSX, Windows, Android). >
I still maintain that my preference is for a textual "source" format such as LaTeX being the official format. With IBM rendering that into PDF, mobi, epub, and HTML5 as part of its distribution process. I like PDF. I really do. But the original design objective for PDF, as mentioned previously, is "print fidelity". That is, it __looks__ the same. In my world, content (not appearance) is king. LaTeX is basically a textual "mark up" language, like DCF (SGML). So I can store it on z/OS and actually read it (and cut'n'paste) in an ISPF session. Am I being too "reactionary" in wanting to have my documentation on the same system as it is documenting? I.e. z/OS documentation on z/OS needing only access to z/OS without any other "specialized" software on a "desktop"? I also like having said documentation in a z/OS UNIX file because: (1) the file names can be more descriptive due to being longer; (2) I'm used to searching for text using "egrep" and regular expressions. Seems like a person will either "love" (me) regexps or "passionately hate" them. > -- > Peter Hunkeler > -- "Pessimism is a admirable quality in an engineer. Pessimistic people check their work three times, because they're sure that something won't be right. Optimistic people check once, trust in Solis-de to keep the ship safe, then blow everyone up." "I think you're mistaking the word optimistic for inept." "They've got a similar ring to my ear." >From "Star Nomad" by Lindsay Buroker: Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
