From: Bernuetz.Oliver_at_cbsc.ic.gc.ca
>I think it's a good compromise to getting documents to as many people
>as possible. Trying to create forms or nice looking documents in HTML
>can be a nightmare, never mind turning a 100+ report done in Word
>or Word Perfect into a web page. Admittedly Acrobat's not perfect,
>you have to reload documents too often to view them and the files
>are a pig to print off sometimes (and try and create a correspondance
>table showing what the keystroke equivalents to the core HW runes
>are! I spent quite some time doing that this morning only to discover
>that PDFWriter turned all the rune characters back into a regular font
>when I went to print it to file).
>
>It's certainly not perfect but you can usually read the results on both
>Mac and IBM type PCs so until XML is more commonly used I
>think it's a good compromise in a lot of instances (but not for
>everything).
The current versions of both Word and Wordperfect will automatically create HTML pages. The HTML produced is not too good but it's usable. You can read Acrobat files on the screen but I find I have to adjust the zoom so that the page (excluding margins) fits across the screen to get something readable, even then it is three key depressions per page with the last one being an odd line of text. Printing part of a document is more difficult as well. As a means of producing a traditional printed document in electronic form it works pretty well but for anything else it's a pain in the neck.
>From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
>
>Terrifyingly, this has already happened here. I believe Ireland
>currently has exactly two games shops -- and that's if you count
>a Games Workshop, which frankly I don't. (Unless one or other of
>the 'Sub City' shops now stock games, which last time I checked they
>did not, their own protestations aside.)
Curiously Games workship lists two of their shops and six independant stockists in Eire. They may of course be toy rather than games shops but it does rather indicate the state of the market.
>Our local convention seems to get a lot of 'walk-ins'. OTOH, whether
>they can be prised out of the bar and away from playing Magic and
>Vampire long enough to think about playing a new game is another
>matter.
I wasn't thinking so much of people on the fringe of the hobby, twenty years ago conventions used to be places families took their kids for a Saturday afternoon. I suppose by comparison with theme parks they just don't have enough attraction.
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