Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
2014-08-18 0:22 GMT+02:00 Joel Rees joel.r...@gmail.com: But they own the format, and 3rd party cleanroom implementations still have No. ISO does this 2007. Best Martin
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
To OP: I think you are polluting the list for nothing. Renaming threads is also awkward since you can't follow them. Let me clarify for you: all that OpenBSD developers can offer is already out for free. They asked for your (our) donations to keep the project going on and they did that with no condition, it is just your free will to donate. The CD and poster stuff is only the top cherry from the cake. There are many ways to donate and yet you are asking for more and try to suggest crazy things. The simple fact is that you need to send money, and CD are a way to redirect some money to one main developer. This is it, no big deal. If you want to send 50 euro, it's either donation or CD buy. It does not matter much what you are getting back for this money, since all is already there for free, it does matter when it comes for developers to pay for expenses. So, you saying that you want a paperback instead of CDs is writting out of boring. Just send the money and print yourself a copy from the project's web page. This way both parts will be happy. Your little project must be maintained also, FAQ is a changing information, it needs another resources and maintainers. Go figure for yourself the costs. Let the already involved people decide what is best for the project and then obey their advices if you can afford. Thanks.
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
On 08/16/14 14:00, Norman Gray wrote: ... At http://nxg.me.uk/temp/openbsd-faq-suggestion/ you will find, for your delectation and delight: * A PDF of sections 1--5 of the FAQ; * An HTML version of this; * A tarball containing the source of the scripts which generate these from XML originals. The idea of the PDF is that it's something which could potentially be sold on dead trees (which might be useful/attractive for the reasons above). I used to generate PDF files of the FAQ. I stopped this a few years ago, when I decided that the use of PDF files was not to be encouraged in any way, shape or form. Adobe writes crap code and does what they can to push it onto as many computers as they can. It has become a popular place to find zero-day exploits permitting undetected entry into corporate computer systems. And looking at how people use PDF files, it just isn't needed. (trivial example of the use of a PDF exploit: Phish a department for e-mail access. Get a few sets of e-mail creds, log into their webmail. Find a PDF someone sent to the entire department (or company!) about an office event. Pull it down, weaponize it, and then RESEND the PDF file via e-mail to the exact same people it was sent to before, with the subject line, Updated office event info!. Who WOULDN'T feel safe opening this? It's from a coworker about something you know is legit. Ta-da, almost every computer in the department is now infected.) Now, this is in no way an OpenBSD problem, Adobe Flash and PDF code do not run on OpenBSD (thank goodness!), but I will do nothing to encourage the use of this format anywhere, as long as Adobe is a major supplier of readers on major platforms, and as long as their corporate attitude towards security is, Wah-wah-wah, everyone's picking on me! Anything involving PDF files will NOT have my personal blessing. You also need to look at the license of the FAQ and website material -- most of it is released just under standard copyright, so any redistribution requires the permission of the copyright holder. Nick.
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Nick, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 11:02, Nick Holland n...@holland-consulting.net wrote: I used to generate PDF files of the FAQ. I stopped this a few years ago, when I decided that the use of PDF files was not to be encouraged in any way, shape or form. Adobe writes crap code and does what they can to push it onto as many computers as they can. It has become a popular place to find zero-day exploits permitting undetected entry into corporate computer systems. And looking at how people use PDF files, it just isn't needed. Well yes, but those are problems with Adobe's dreadful reader, not with the (standardised) format itself. It's for this reason that no-one should use Adobe's reader if they can possibly help it. But there are other PDF implementations. You also need to look at the license of the FAQ and website material -- most of it is released just under standard copyright, so any redistribution requires the permission of the copyright holder. But I'm not planning to distribute anything. The temporary URL I posted was to demo the results of the suggestion I was making. To be clear, I'm proposing that the XHTML version of the FAQ text would potentially be usable as the master version, and used to generate HTML and any other formats that were desirable (such as a PDF, or a text version via *roff). All the best, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Mihai, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 09:50, Mihai Popescu mih...@gmail.com wrote: To OP: I presume you're addressing me? and yet you are asking for more and try to suggest crazy things. No, I'm not asking for more. I'm offering code, and a mildly reorganised FAQ source text which would incidentally make it easier to maintain in future. So, you saying that you want a paperback instead of CDs is writting out of boring. No, I'm not saying I want a paperback. I'll spell this out again: It has been claimed that some people would buy a printed text who would not buy CDs (this was originally Worik Stanton's suggestion, and I think it's plausible). If such an artefact can be produced and distributed trivially easily (I think I have demonstrated the first part of that, and that sites like lulu.com support the second), then that means more money for the OpenBSD project. Your little project must be maintained also, Thank you for your kind condescension. FAQ is a changing information, it needs another resources and maintainers. Indeed, and the easier that task is, the better. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
I'll spell this out again: It has been claimed that some people would buy a printed text who would not buy CDs (this was originally Worik Stanton's suggestion, and I think it's plausible). If such an artefact can be produced and distributed trivially easily (I think I have demonstrated the first part of that, and that sites like lulu.com support the second), then that means more money for the OpenBSD project. It does not mean more money for the OpenBSD project. Noone is going to bother setting up sales for something that can be trivially reproduced.
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Theo, hello. On 2014 Aug 17, at 18:09, Theo de Raadt dera...@cvs.openbsd.org wrote: Noone is going to bother setting up sales for something that can be trivially reproduced. But that's the odd thing about the Python Reference Manual I linked to [1]. It's identical to the downloadable version of the same document, and either people don't realise this, or else they do but want the paper thing anyway. I've no idea what its sales are, but the existence of reviews on that page indicates that they're non-zero. Of course, the python community is both larger than, and different from, the OpenBSD one, so this is no more than an existence proof. However the same 'they can just download it' argument can also be applied to the distribution CDs, and folk are encouraged to buy them, and do, for various reasons. It's certainly true, though, that there'd be an effort trade-off to calculate. All I'm adding is that if that trade-off _were_ deemed to be worth it, then generating the PDF, and HTML, is trivial. All the best, Norman [1] http://www.amazon.com/Python-Language-Reference-Manual/dp/1906966141/ -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
2014/08/17 20:50 Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk: [...] Well yes, but those are problems with Adobe's dreadful reader, not with the (standardised) format itself. Unfortunately, the format itself breeds holes. Being a fan of postfix languages, it's been a bit of a bitter pill for me, but I've done some of the math. The problem is not just the implentation. Still, the larger problems are that Adobe has a near monopoly in this segment and is not willing to slow down to let natural competition help clean things up, and is not willing to slow down to clean things up themselves. Very irresponsible, just like the other big companies. But they own the format, and 3rd party cleanroom implementations still have to follow their lead in today's monopoly-supporting IP regime. [...] It's not that your efforts are unappreciated, but you should recognize that the path you are tracing is not new. Nor should you necessarily be too discouraged. Just recognize that there is a lot more work to be done, if the project is going to take this on. The technical part is the easy part, and I think that you do realize that what you accomplished isn't really even 5/18ths of the technical part of the job. (I speak as a lurker who has seen something like this before.) Also, if you are considering donating the necessary work yourself, you might want to talk with Michael Lucas. I think he might be able to help you avoid some of the dead-end paths in the solution tree. Joel Rees Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens. All is a stream of text flowing from the past into the future.
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Well yes, but those are problems with Adobe's dreadful reader, not with the (standardised) format itself. Unfortunately, the format itself breeds holes. Being a fan of postfix languages, it's been a bit of a bitter pill for me, but I've done some of the math. The problem is not just the implentation. Still, the larger problems are that Adobe has a near monopoly in this segment and is not willing to slow down to let natural competition help clean things up, and is not willing to slow down to clean things up themselves. Very irresponsible, just like the other big companies. But they own the format, and 3rd party cleanroom implementations still have to follow their lead in today's monopoly-supporting IP regime. [...] It's not that your efforts are unappreciated, but you should recognize that the path you are tracing is not new. Nor should you necessarily be too discouraged. Just recognize that there is a lot more work to be done, if the project is going to take this on. The technical part is the easy part, and I think that you do realize that what you accomplished isn't really even 5/18ths of the technical part of the job. (I speak as a lurker who has seen something like this before.) Also, if you are considering donating the necessary work yourself, you might want to talk with Michael Lucas. I think he might be able to help you avoid some of the dead-end paths in the solution tree. I've seen this before. It has never helped OpenBSD. I'll stop short of calling the OP a troll, but boy, what an amazing distraction. I wonder who funds him.
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
| I've seen this before. It has never helped OpenBSD. I'll stop short of calling | the OP a troll, but boy, what an amazing distraction. I wonder who funds | him. Yep, if it's such a great idea then why aren't these suggestion makers doing it? The answer is that it would be a colossal waste of their time. If they really believed in their suggestions then they would step up and really volunteer to make it happen. Instead, they try to foist it on the project developers. It's nothing more than wishful thinking at work. As the saying goes, wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first. Anyone who is really serious will just donate money without any expectation of getting something for it, because the smart ones among the user base already realize that the OpenBSD software releases are paying it back in spades. By next year I'll be finished articling, I'll be earning a real paycheque once more, and you can expect to start receiving those annual $200 cheques from me again, Theo. I'll wager that not one of these suggestion makers has even managed half that amount on a recurring basis. Maybe not even one tenth. I'm mean, didn't the one guy say he bought a t-shirt once? How generous of him. You better adopt every suggestion he makes. I mean, you owe him, right? :eyeroll: Breeno
PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
Greetings. Some way up this thread, I said: On 2014 Aug 14, at 11:21, Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk wrote: On 2014 Aug 14, at 01:10, Worik Stanton worik.stan...@gmail.com wrote: Suggestion: Package the release notes, FAQ and some other documentation into a PDF and sell that at the same price as the CD, from the same place. I'd buy that. It would be better quality than the (often) crap O'Reilly sell, and I buy that. This is potentially quite a good idea. The T-shirts and CDs exist because (a) some people find them useful in themselves, and (b) some people prefer or find it more convenient to buy a physical thing they don't intend to use, as a means of making an indirect donation to the project. This of course is discussed at length in the rest of this thread. There's precedent for such a physical book being sellable. The Python Reference Manual [1] is a dead-tree version of the language and library description also available for free at [2]. There's clearly some story about the various reasons why people buy that, but it's clear that at least some do. I have considered doing so myself -- a paper document is superior to an on-screen one in some circumstances -- but in the end found it more convenient to print out selected sections of the downloaded PDF. Places like lulu.com will put a PDF on paper for you and sell/ship the result. I've no idea of the economic details of that, or alternatives to lulu, but such services do exist. I'm not making any promises here, but given mild encouragement I'd be very willing to take a look at how complicated it would be to turn the existing text or texts into a readable PDF (I've done this sort of thing before, and could probably do it fairly efficiently). After posting that, I received some ... non-discouragement off-list, and that's enough for me. At http://nxg.me.uk/temp/openbsd-faq-suggestion/ you will find, for your delectation and delight: * A PDF of sections 1--5 of the FAQ; * An HTML version of this; * A tarball containing the source of the scripts which generate these from XML originals. The idea of the PDF is that it's something which could potentially be sold on dead trees (which might be useful/attractive for the reasons above). To do this, I took the HTML versions of the FAQ sections, and normalised them into regular XHTML (which makes them processable into other forms). With that done, it was straightforward to transform the result into both HTML for presentation, and into LaTeX for further transformation into PDF. This depends on the xsltproc package, and obviously on LaTeX. The HTML target does things like adding in consistent structuring, generating tables of contents, ensuring that internal cross-references are consistent, and so on. The results should be identical in content, and pretty similar in appearance, to the online versions. The normalisation of the contents consisted in large part of regularising away various bits of cruft used for layout (for example blockquote and table elements (eek!) around pre, which are fiddly to manage and are inevitably inconsistent across the document), making ... and '...' consistent, and a couple of other things discussed in the README in the tarball. The README also contains some notes on the lightweight structuring added to the source files. It would be pretty straightforward to generate a .txt FAQ from these same sources (via *roff). The results here aren't very pretty -- and obviously I've only done the first five sections -- but they're respectable and should show the idea. Even if the PDF idea isn't taken up, this is potentially an alternative way to generate the HTML files, in contrast to hand-editing disconnected .html files. I like the idea of the 'Good Idea Fairy'! This one comes with product. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk wrote: Greetings. Some way up this thread, I said: On 2014 Aug 14, at 11:21, Norman Gray nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk wrote: On 2014 Aug 14, at 01:10, Worik Stanton worik.stan...@gmail.com wrote: Suggestion: Package the release notes, FAQ and some other documentation into a PDF and sell that at the same price as the CD, from the same place. I'd buy that. It would be better quality than the (often) crap O'Reilly sell, and I buy that. This is potentially quite a good idea. The T-shirts and CDs exist because (a) some people find them useful in themselves, and (b) some people prefer or find it more convenient to buy a physical thing they don't intend to use, as a means of making an indirect donation to the project. This of course is discussed at length in the rest of this thread. There's precedent for such a physical book being sellable. The Python Reference Manual [1] is a dead-tree version of the language and library description also available for free at [2]. There's clearly some story about the various reasons why people buy that, but it's clear that at least some do. I have considered doing so myself -- a paper document is superior to an on-screen one in some circumstances -- but in the end found it more convenient to print out selected sections of the downloaded PDF. Places like lulu.com will put a PDF on paper for you and sell/ship the result. I've no idea of the economic details of that, or alternatives to lulu, but such services do exist. I'm not making any promises here, but given mild encouragement I'd be very willing to take a look at how complicated it would be to turn the existing text or texts into a readable PDF (I've done this sort of thing before, and could probably do it fairly efficiently). After posting that, I received some ... non-discouragement off-list, and that's enough for me. At http://nxg.me.uk/temp/openbsd-faq-suggestion/ you will find, for your delectation and delight: * A PDF of sections 1--5 of the FAQ; * An HTML version of this; * A tarball containing the source of the scripts which generate these from XML originals. The idea of the PDF is that it's something which could potentially be sold on dead trees (which might be useful/attractive for the reasons above). To do this, I took the HTML versions of the FAQ sections, and normalised them into regular XHTML (which makes them processable into other forms). With that done, it was straightforward to transform the result into both HTML for presentation, and into LaTeX for further transformation into PDF. This depends on the xsltproc package, and obviously on LaTeX. The HTML target does things like adding in consistent structuring, generating tables of contents, ensuring that internal cross-references are consistent, and so on. The results should be identical in content, and pretty similar in appearance, to the online versions. The normalisation of the contents consisted in large part of regularising away various bits of cruft used for layout (for example blockquote and table elements (eek!) around pre, which are fiddly to manage and are inevitably inconsistent across the document), making ... and '...' consistent, and a couple of other things discussed in the README in the tarball. The README also contains some notes on the lightweight structuring added to the source files. It would be pretty straightforward to generate a .txt FAQ from these same sources (via *roff). The results here aren't very pretty -- and obviously I've only done the first five sections -- but they're respectable and should show the idea. Even if the PDF idea isn't taken up, this is potentially an alternative way to generate the HTML files, in contrast to hand-editing disconnected .html files. I like the idea of the 'Good Idea Fairy'! This one comes with product. Best wishes, Norman -- Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK in the glorious third millemium are usb key as cheap as cd printing ? -- - () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\
Re: PDF FAQ [Was: Donations to OpenBSD]
On 14-08-16 01:01 PM, Norman Gray wrote: To do this, I took the HTML versions of the FAQ sections, and normalised them into regular XHTML (which makes them processable into other forms). With that done, it was straightforward to transform the result into both HTML for presentation, and into LaTeX for further transformation into PDF. This depends on the xsltproc package, and obviously on LaTeX. [...] It would be pretty straightforward to generate a .txt FAQ from these same sources (via *roff). I find that this work would be useful to me - there are (admittedly rare) occasions where I want an offline copy of the documentation. But... shouldn't the master copy be in mdoc(7) format? ;-) Now, if anyone actually took that seriously: I believe work on doclifter(1) and docbook2mdoc(1) is already in consideration, perhaps there's an reasonably-automatic way to do the conversion? If not, I certainly don't think it's worth the time to change it by hand. -- -Adam Thompson athom...@athompso.net
