In article <3A1### [at] my-dejanewscom>, gre### [at] my-dejanewscom 
wrote:

> I'd like the collection to look something much more like the povray 
> webring than say povray.binaries.tutorials.  I'd like it to be linked 
> HTML pages rather than a collection of ZIP files.

Who said anything about .zip's? And what is wrong with linking to pages 
in their own folders instead of having everything in one place?
Also, what if people don't want to have the CD in their drive all the 
time and don't want to copy the whole thing to their HD?
The tutorials should be accessible by using the operating system as well 
as a main HTML page...


> Q1: Is the opposition to this proposal based on an assumption of a 
> pile of ZIP's? IMO, if we go with a pile of ZIP's (even in own 
> subdirectories), let's just stick with p.b.t., as the CD will offer 
> no value-add to anyone.

Again, who said anything about .zip's? The tutorials should be in 
immediately readable form, uncompressed .html, .txt, .pov, and image 
files, not .zip or other compressed formats.
However, being uncompressed doesn't mean they have to be jumbled 
together in one folder...


> I'm just thinking suppose we end up with 100 separate tuts. It is 
> going to be difficult for the person who wants to "get at" the 
> information by a means other than the official HTML paths, regardless 
> of 100 subdirectories or 100*(2 to 10) files in one big directory.   
> I'm thinking that it will be a much bigger pain to write the CD if 
> there are 100 subdirectories, with little value add to the user.

Jumbling everything in one directory will definitely make it more 
difficult to maintain. You will have to deal with name conflicts between 
tutorials, updates to individual tutorials, making sure you link to the 
right files, etc....if you have separate directories, you only have to 
worry about the directory names, which the tutorials themselves can 
ignore, being completely self-contained.
And for accessing the files...how is sorting through several hundred 
cryptically named files to find the specific set of files you need 
easier than finding one well-named directory out of a hundred? There 
*are* going to be people who want to pick out individual tutorials to 
study without having to have the CD in all the time...

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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