Re: A plea for better documents in next SVG 1.1 iteration

In a message dated 20/04/02 14:05:44 GMT Daylight Time, dean@w3.org writes:


> I also apologise for the lack of these in the current last
> call draft. I sincerely hope it didn't put you and others completely
> off reviewing the document.

Hi Dean,

Thanks for the prompt feedback. I wasn't intending to pressurise you and 
generate an apology. I appreciate all the hard work you put into this 
process.

As far as this particular iteration is concerned it pretty much put me off 
investing time to comment. That was partly because I was particularly busy 
anyway, so the minor hurdle of fragmented documents (with no zip file 
available) was sufficient to make me give this one a miss. ... Quite possibly 
because I was just overcomitted anyway. :)

I guess an assessment of total number of comments this time round may give 
you some indication of whether others responded similarly. It may, overall, 
be a non-issue.


> It was quite important to release on that particular day. 
> I just ran out of time producing the two extra versions.
> The PDF in particular can take a fair bit of work to
> get right (this is why I say "most probably" above - the number
> one priority is the HTML by chapter version)
> 
> Are you sure you want a single *huge* HTML file? Why is that
> more use than a fragmented one (apart from printing, in
> which case you could use the PDF, if it exists!). 

I really like to be able to use a text search when following an idea 
throughout the whole spec (the provided inter-document or inter-topic links 
don't always follow my thought pattern). A PDF (my first preference) or a 
single huge HTML file make that type of search much easier than attempting to 
search across fragmented docs.

Way back in the "olden days" when SVG 1.0 was being developed I thought the 
PDF was great. It helped me a lot, as someone outside the WG, to get to grips 
with SVG significantly better than the other document options.

Different people work in different ways. I think it is a good idea to 
routinely and consistently provide a variety of document formats to maximise 
input from the potential audience who might want to invest time to comment.

Regards

Andrew Watt