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Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 8 Mar 1994 21:13:47 EST
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I offer the following comments:

As a way of testing (sorry - it's the engineer in me) I copied the largest
file
I have on my PC (Tom Sawyer Abroad) over and over a few times in WP 5.1 and
finally got 900 pages.  I got the following results:

    Reposition to end of file from beginning     3:30 min
    Reposition to beginning of file from end     3:30 min
    Search to end of file for nonexistent word   3:30 min

(Yes, they're all the same.)  This seems to be better than Jerry's results,
and
I was using a 486DX-33MHz with the hard drive DoubleSpaced.  It still may be
cumbersome, however.  I see three obvious options:  large file viewed with
WP or the like, smaller files (chapters?) viewed the same, or a large file
viewed with a dedicated "hypertext" reader.

Large WP file:
    - Easy to keep track of and copy around since its one file
    - Easy to search through end-to-end
    - Bulky to copy, load, search, save, etc.
    - Possibly impossible (now there's an oxymoron!) to read at all if
      the user doesn't have a program that can read a 2 Mbyte+ file.  I
don't
      think that's much of a problem anymore like it once might have been.

Smaller WP files:
    - More complex to keep track of and copy around
    - Difficult to search end-to-end
    - Easy to load each section, _more_ difficult to load entire text
    - Quick searching each section only
    - Very easily read (in text form, not WP) by cheapo system text editors

Dedicated hypertext reader:
    - Need to decide on or develop hypertext program
    - Vert quick searching end-to-end
         ^ should say "very" - sorry, I'm typing this real-time
    - Quick loading, since its a special-purpose reading-only program
    - User needs index file and reader in addition to text itself

Of these, I'd recommend one large file (text or WP) as simplest with decent
usability, hypertext as best performance but most complex (it need not be
_that_ complex), and several small files as method you use when you have to,
but middle-way in terms of ease to produce with some definite drawbacks.

As to the question of WP vs. text -

WP format:
    - WP is commonly used, but not universal
    - WP provides sophisticated search, formatting, cut/paste, and other f
      features
    - WP limits the platforms
    - WP is slow since it reads in the entire file and spools it to disk
    - WP can use unlimited-size files

Plain text format:
    - Very difficult to reformat (due to embedded end-of-line's)
    - More easily used by a variety of editors/viewers

It comes down to the "niceness" of WP vs. the portability of plain text.
Sure
would be nice if you could provide both.

Hope this helps some.  I would be happy to continue the discussion of
hypertext
if you're interested.

Now my main question:  how do I acquire this disk biography myself?  Also,
how
have you "just released" it when you're still deciding how to release it?

Travis Dawson

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