Re: Work in progress: ASCII art FAQ 3.0.-2

Matthew.. . I don't know if you are still around or if you have gone on
holiday :o) but here's a message anyway...

.----- On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:20:48 +1200, Matthew Thomas posted:
|=======================================================================
|This version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the ASCII art
|Usenet groups is a development version only, and should not be archived
|or reposted. If you're new to this group, please look for a message
|posted by Martin Atkins with the subject `[FAQ] New to ascii art? Read
|me first!' and read that instead, or you may get horribly confused.
|
|Notes to regulars
|-----------------
|
|1. INTRODUCING ADA
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> .----- On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 12:14:51 -0500, Martin DiViaio posted:
|> |All the FAQ documents should be combined into one document. Yes, I
|> |know this makes a monster but it does put all the information in one
|> |place and gets rid of repetitive information in some documents.
|> '----------------------
|> That would be the ideal thing, but having a huge document (I feel) may
|> turn people away from taking the time to read it, defeating it's
|> object. The documents with obvious headings ('Monospaced Fonts. Text
|> Editors and ASCII Utils!' and 'Not looking right? Read this') help to
|> give newbies (for want of a better word) an obvious place to look for
|> the two most asked questions of all. This will need to be kept obvious
|> in some way.
|
|My hope is to make many of those other documents redundant by repeating
|what they say in the FAQ, without making the FAQ too long. But it would
|be quite reasonable for there to be other documents which go off into
|far more detail on specific topics -- for example, Martin's registry
|patch for Outlook Express 4, or Daniel Au's tutorial on how to start
|drawing ASCII art. It's these documents, I think, which should form what
|I hereby suggest be called the ASCII-Art Documentation Archive (ADA).
|
|What I'd like to be able to do is give a brief answer to each question
|in the FAQ, and then a couple of links to more detailed information at
|the end of each answer. For example, at the end of `I like that ASCII
|picture -- can I copy it for myself?', I'd have a link to the Copyright
|Myths FAQ. And at the end of `How do I draw my own ASCII art?', I'd link
|to a few tutorials. And so on.
'-------------------------------------
Donovan has suggested that it all be one massive document for ease of
printing, while I and others think that it should be a short document to get
people to read it --- I think we can do both.
Mattew, would it be reasonable to suggest two versions of the FAQ?

You write a short answer as you suggest above, followed by the more detailed
answer underneath exactly as you said. Then, you take out all of the 'more
detail' bits to make the short version which will then be posted to the
newsgroup. You will obv need to mark them as such and put in the short
version that more information is available, and possibly mark the revision
numbers something like 3.0a for the short version and 3.0b for the long one,
or maybe l and s would be more appropriate.. whatever.

What do you think?

.-------------------------------------
|
|4. FORMAT WARS
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> I feel that it is easier for all concerned to just have one copy of
|> the main FAQ in plain text format... if we have an HTML version and a
|> Text version hanging around things will be harder to keep under
|> control and keep people updated.
|
|Well, speak for yourself! I've had no problems keeping parallel HTML and
|text versions of the FAQ up-to-date over the past two years, and I will
|continue to do so. The HTML version contains hypertext links both to its
|various subsections (e.g. `see Question 4') and to external documents.
|
|As soon as this FAQ is finished, I'll e-mail Martin both versions (text
|and HTML) to put in ADA. So those people who want easy links, and can
|put up with the occasional popup, can use the HTML version; and those
|who want `just the FAQs, ma'am' can go to the text version.
|
|Everybody happy?
'-----------------------------
That is what I have done in the ADA, with the HTML version unavailable at
present and the plain text being 2.0.2 or whatever the new version I had
was?

.-----------------------------
|5. BETWEEN THE STYLE SHEETS
|
|I don't think that any mirror-specific formatting should be added
|to any of the documents. This is to help people searching the Web for
|the documents: search engines can tell if two documents are exactly the
|same, and show links to the duplicates underneath the first copy. Any
|formatting added means that the documents are no longer exact
|duplicates, so the search engines will unnecessarily show them as
|separate entries and it will be harder for people searching the Web to
|tell what is which.
'------------------------------
Well, I would have gone for this but since it is the hosts doing the hosting
I had to say that these people can add navbars and colours to the documents
if they so wish... if it wasn't for this there would probably of only been
four mirrors, three of which are mine!

.------------------------------
|A couple of years in the future, perhaps, I will include a relative link
|in the HTML version of the FAQ to an "../ada.css" which will sit in the
|parent directory of ada/ (whichever directory that happens to be for
|that mirror): that way they can apply verious styles to their copy if
|they so desire, without the actual data in the FAQ file being any
|different. Martin could distribute a default ada.css to the mirroring
|people, for those who didn't care about doing it themselves.
|
|But, as I say, that's a couple of years away yet. 
'-------------------------------
Well, the ADA has a very *minimal* CSS with it, which sorts out things like
centered headings and putting it in a sans-serif font. Hosts/Hostesses can
either rebuild this to their needs or remove it completely and go for
HTML3/Netscape-style formatting with <FONT> tags and <BODY
Blah=#???????>-type things.

.--------------------------
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> If you use CSS properly it allows you to make it look nice on 'decent'
|> browsers while making it usable on older ones, and making it almost
|> plain text (very minimal markup). Therefore I believe that that should
|> be what is used... might be just me, though.
|
|The problem is, Martin, that modern browsers don't implement CSS
|*properly* (not even Opera, although it comes close). In an ideal world
|browsers would perfectly implement the parts of CSS which they could,
|and leave the rest alone completely; but what both Netscape Navigator
|and Internet Explorer (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) do is
|*incorrectly* implement parts of CSS, which makes it almost unusable
|from a Webmaster's point of view. For now.
'---------------------------
Well, the CSS I used on the ADA I don't think has any chance of going
wrong... what can go wrong with centering <H?> tags and changing the fonts
to Sans Serif?

What hosts/hostesses add is not up to me, however.

.--------------------------
|As for me, I have style sheets, Java, Javascript, custom colors, and
|custom fonts all turned off in my browser, and I have never enjoyed Web
|surfing more ...
'--------------------------
And the ADA will still work fine for you, believe me. I tested it in IE4 by
moving the CSS out of the way temporarily, and loading it into IE2, Lynx,
Netscape 3.0 and Netscape 4 of some sort (actually a friend did that for
me). I'm confident that it will work in all browsers and I'll test it in
Opera when I next go into work ... I'm working from home at the moment :o)

.------------------------
|
|Finally, Martin, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took the `Ten
|Commandments' and put them in a separate document.
|
'------------------------
Tis done.

.------------------------
|    
|    B.  What program are you using to view the messages?
|        * AOL [???]: --> L
|        * Eudora or Eudora Light: --> H
'---------------------

AFAIA all versions of AOL use Arial 10pt for newsgroups...

.------------------------
|    
|    D.  From the View menu, choose Options. Click on the Read tab. Set
|        the `[???]' [???] to [???]. Click Ok. Did this fix your problem?
|        * Yes: END
|        * No: --> Z
'--------------------------------

Tools menu ... options ... read tab ... press the 'Fonts...' button ...
choose a fixed-width font for *BOTH PROPORTIONAL AND FIXED WIDTH FONT*, and
press OK in the fonts window and the options window.

(The reason for having to specify a fixed width in the proportional is that
the Fixed Width option is for <PRE> and <TT> tags in HTML rich postings)

Put that in your own words :o)
    
.------------------------
|
'------------------------

Hmm why did I leave that quote box there. <g>


-Martin
|\/| _..__|_o._   /\_|_| o._  _   mart.atkins@--
|  |(_||  |_|| | /--\|_|<|| |_>            --bigfoot.com

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