<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Should I distribute source and/or already formatted documentation?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux Man Page Howto" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="What preprocessors may I use?" HREF="q6.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="What are the font conventions?" HREF="q8.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux Man Page Howto</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="q6.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="q8.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="Q7" ></A >7. Should I distribute source and/or already formatted documentation?</H1 ><P >Let me give the pros (+) and cons (-) of a few selected possibilities:</P ><P ></P ><OL TYPE="1" ><LI ><P >Source only:+ smaller distribution package.- inaccessible on systems without <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT >.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Uncompressed formatted only:+ accessible even on systems without <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT >.- the user can't generate a dvi or postscript file.- waste of disk space on systems that also handle compressed pages.</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Compressed formatted only:+ accessible even on systems without <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT >.- the user can't generate a dvi or postscript file.- which compression format would you use? .Z? .z? .gz? All of them?</P ></LI ><LI ><P >Source and uncompressed formatted:+ accessible even on systems without <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT >.- larger distribution package- some systems may expect compressed formatted man pages.- redundant information on systems equipped with <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT >.</P ></LI ></OL ><P >IMHO it is best to distribute source only. The argument that it's inaccessible on systems without <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT > does not matter. The 500+ man pages of the Linux Documentation Project are source only. The man pages of XFree86 are source only. The man pages from the FSF are source only. In fact, I have rarely seen software distributed with formatted man pages. If any sysadmin is really concerned about having man pages accessible then he also has <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >groff</TT > installed.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="q6.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="q8.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >What preprocessors may I use?</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >What are the font conventions?</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >