> From: Martin McCormick <martin@DC.CIS.OKSTATE.EDU>
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Just my oppinion (Was  Thoughts on PDF? (A Bit Off Topic) )
> Date: Tuesday, 10 June 1997 00:53
>
>         I am lazy and also a firm believer in backward compatibility.
ASCII
> is wonderful and almost universal and requires no high-end stuff to
support
> it.  My idea of a search when faced with hundreds of kilobytes of text
and
> the thought that the nugget of information I want is in there somewhere
> is to do something simple like:
>
> grep -i "nugget of information" *

Yes, ascii's nice to search, but it doesn't lend itself to charts / tables
/ pictures / circuit diagrams ... the list continues.  Just because grep
will run thru ascii isn't a reason to discard high-end stuff.  A few search
engines (eg AltaVista home, or whatever its called)  are capable of
operating on binary data files.

>
> and then sit back and wait to see what happened.  I even found some ports
> of grep that work in DOS so you can do the same kind of thing on a P.C.
> as long as you remember that *.* rather than just * searches them all.
>
>         In a perfect world, form would always take a back seat to
function
> and frills would never get in the way.  Me thinks we have a way to go
yet.
>
Imagine what a mess the MicroChip CD would be in ascii.  PDF may not be
perfect, but it's better than a lot of the databased CD/graphic
alternatives I've seen

MikeS
<mikesmith_oz@relaymail.net>