Re: FAQ formatting

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Lars Idema (idema@dds.nl)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 12:02:14 +0100


At 25 Jan 1997 17:45:26 -0700 Kate the Short <katew@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu>
wrote:
>> so my question: how do i fix this? i have seen text documents (not just
>> FAQs of course) that wrap correctly in ALL viewers. how? i'll do whatever
>> it takes, basically.
>Do you have a word processor and the ability to FTP? If so, you may
>find these instructions (written for a different audience!) to be
>helpful:
>(Best in Microsoft Word, but should also work in Wordperfect and Write
>and other similar programs...)

For some reason I always did the line-breaking by hand (I'm very capable
with wordprocessors, but never thought to use it with the ascii-FAQs :(.

I followed Kate's 6-step tips (thanks Kate!), and got a nice 75 or so char
wide ascii document. Only the hanging indents had to be corrected by hand in
the resulting ASCII document. I have been aiming for a text document because
it is mainly used in a mailing list. But the document is available and
frequently requested on a website too. Until now the Web-FAQ is in plain
ASCII, but I plan to upgrade it to a full HTML document (that's what the
Web's for).

QUESTION: How does one manage to maintain only *one* 'rich-text' document
and draw both HTML and plain ascii documents from it?

I could of course format it all in HTML and have Netscape save it to ASCII,
but I would like the Web-FAQ to contain lots of links, and I would not like
to have these links or other web-stuff show up in the ASCII version. Simply
cutting them out later by hand would leave me with many half lines, so
that's no solution.

Any tips are welcome!

Lars Idema
Maintainer of Hypoglycemia Mailing List FAQ (medical/supportive)

--
 Lars Idema  <idema@dds.nl>


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