Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 18:47:38 +0100
From: Chris Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
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To: grbhat AT unigoa DOT ernet DOT in
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: A Suggestion.
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Message-Id: <97Apr8.194447gmt+0100.21898@internet01.amc.de>


Gurunandan R. Bhat wrote:

> having said that, let me add that i did not express myself clearly the
> first time. what i meant was that wherever possible, why dont we include
> the texi files *in place of* the info files. with the texi file i can
> generate the inf sources *and* the dvi file. i dont think that this would 
> increase the size significantly. for example, flex.inf (which is included 
> with the binaries) is 113567 whereas flex.texi is 112286. i haven't 
> compared the relative sizes of texi v/s inf for other packages though. 

Have you considered that it would mean everyone having to do a build,
not just the few who want the dvi files?

As I see it, the point of the binary distributions is so that people
can install and just use the package, without having to compile or
convert it.  Otherwise why not distribute everything in source only?
For some of us the time and resources to do that are non-trivial, and
if there's a choice between a package which runs "out of the box" and
one which requires building they'll choose the former (which was why I 
was very impressed with the DJGPP packages, with a couple of minor 
exceptions I had to do no 'tweaking' to get them to work - a couple of
environment variables in autoexec.bat, set them in the current 
environment and run, and that was only at the beginning).

Chris