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From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Subject: Re: What file format should technical documentation be distributed in?
Message-ID: <1990Aug24.143007.5915@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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Reply-To: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
References: <23862@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 90 14:30:07 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <23862@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ari Halberstadt) writes:
>Obviously, the problem of distributing documentation for the Macintosh
>is very serious. There seems to be no standard which will cope with
>complicated formatting information.

I am now distributing the manual for my Macintosh email program, Eudora,
in "Glue" format.  "Glue" is a chooser-level "printer" driver that saves
what you print to disk, in one of several formats.  Included in the "Glue"
package is a FREEWARE viewer, that you can also distribute with your
documentation.  The viewer lets you browse or print the documentation, and
also lets you Edit->Copy sections of it.

The Eudora manual is 50 or 60 pages, in PageMaker, with lots of illustrations.
It seems to work just fine.  (If you'd like to see for yourself, anonymous
ftp to ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, and look in the mac/eudora subdirectory.)

Glue (actually, "SuperGlue II(TM)") is from Solutions, Inc.; it costs
$60 or so from the mail-order places.  While it's kind of irksome to
have to pay to be able to give away documentation, it's the best solution
we've found so far.

[My thanks to Doug Walsten of NCSA for suggesting Glue to me.]
--
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu  UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner