Re: HTML 4.01.pdf?

Steven wrote:
> 
> Hello comrades,
> Ever heard of pdf? It's a format capable of delivering high
> quality text for easy online reading. That is if the whole thing
> isn't ruined by visible link boxes! (that's hint number 1).
> Pdf doesn't have to be stuffed to be accessible on the web.
> Especially not in a mac-unfriendly gzip format. (that's hint
> number 2). I have tried both on a Mac and on a PC to download
> the HTML401 spec in pdf format. (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/html40.pdf.gz)
> In both cases I get error messages that say the file is corrupted.
> Please, don't be geeky and give us the plain pdf and loose the
> visible link boxes in the file. And if you must compress do it in
> formats that can be read.
> 
> Sorry, pissed off.

Hi Steven,

Not to piss you off further, the appropriate mailing
list for comments on the HTML specification is given in the
HTML spec: 

  "Please report errors in this document to www-html-editor@w3.org."

However, I'm the editor of that spec, I'll answer and copy
www-html-editor.

1) The PDF file, uncompressed is 3 Mbytes. That's way too large
   for most people to want to download, so we compressed it.
   We could offer an uncompressed version in the next draft.
   The problem is that people want the spec in 47 different
   formats and combinations of formats. We drew the line at five.

2) Do you mean by visible link boxes the page number references
   (e.g., [p.322])? I pretty much agree with you since there are
   so many of them. I've stopped using them in other specs.

3) I just downloaded the file and unzipped it (on Linux) and viewed
   the PDF just fine. So I don't think it's corrupted.

4) While I haven't tested the following information myself, I found
   these hints on unzipping files on the Mac [2]. Also, the gzip  
   home page [3] lists a Mac port: MacGzip

Please let me know (on www-html-editor) whether you can view
the file. 

 - Ian

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/build/mac-gzip-tar.html
[3] http://www.gzip.org/
-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Thursday, 7 September 2000 12:18:21 UTC