Newcomer guide

[Joel Schumacher]

> From: Michael Mayer <delamare at flash.net>
> 
> Additionally, having read Joel Schumacher's comment that a new member
> guidebook was unavailable, I was greatly dismayed.  To Joel and all
> others which have electronic access, please visit the new member guide,
> THE GUIDING HAND, on-line at:
> 
> http://www.flash.net/~delamare

Yes, I meant to follow up and mention this site.  This is an excellent
site and provides a lot of helpful information to the newcomer.

I did not mean to imply that such information is not available now.
However, in late '93, when I was looking for such information, I would
doubt that any such web sites were available.  I don't recall whether web
browsers were even around yet.  And, even if they were, I didn't have an
internet connection.  So, paper was what I really needed at the time.

Even in the present some folks are "web-impaired" and do not have access
to such info.  Paper printouts or copies of info from these sites are
probably still the best suited for something to get people started.

This brings up a question of web-publishing vs. word processors.

Good web-documents tend to be short on content, but have lots of nice
links to more information.  It's kind of like an encylopedia.  You might,
for instance, have a page describing court and it mentions knights.  The
word "knights" links you to another short page describing the knighthood.

The problem comes when you want to print this info to create a newcomer's
guide, you end up printing a lot of pages that lose something on paper.
They're a bunch of pages, each about a different topic, that don't really
flow together in any sort of progression.

On the other hand, let's say you're using MS-Word.  You organize it to
flow logically, maybe follow an outline of what to present.  You break
to a new page where it makes sense to do so, maybe add headers and footers.
You design around the printed page.  It tends to come off in print looking
much better than printing an HTML page.

Has anyone else come to this dilema?  Has you found a happy medium?  Do
you maintain both copies?

-Karl von Augsburg
__________________________________________________________________________
Joel Schumacher                        JCPenney Co. - UNIX Network Systems
jschumac at uns-dv1.jcpenney.com          12700 Park Central Pl
(972) 591-7543                         Dallas TX  75251