I would strongly lean to an option that has good styling and formatting capabilities. I feel that these courses need to be a bit more exciting and interesting to read than an encyclopedia. However, I think offering a plain text (.txt) version would be able to reach the greatest amount of people successfully. I would propose to use a combination of the two by offering the styling and user-friendliness of .odt as our main format. All courses would be offered in .odt format, and this would be what the majority of people would use. Then we would create 'backups' of all our courses as .txt and offer them to people as an option who either can't or don't want to use the .odt version. Obviously, this would mean slightly more work, but to take an existing .odt file, and export it as a plain text file shouldn't be that hard. This way, we would reach anyone who's interested in our courses - the people who like styled and formatted guides, as well as people who are trying to look up this information on a cellphone, or other means that wouldn't support that format. Let me know what you guys think. I'm just throwing this out there, and I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but just wanted to share my opinions in the name of brain-storming. Steve (swoody) <div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 5:50 PM, William Chambers <<a href="mailto:william@bioselement.com">william@bioselement.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Researched options for the format of course lessons Currently on the table are the following, OpenOffice Documents (.odt) Plain Text (.txt) Sphinx (.txt) DocBook (.xml?) AsciiDoc (.txt) Following are advantages and disadvantages for each. Please note that this is not an extensive list and may not include the obvious. OpenOffice Documents (.odt) ADVANTAGES: Pre-Installed on Ubuntu, Open Format, Ease of Editing DISADVANTAGES: Currently impossible to use with bzr or version control, Difficult to keep consistent styling, Any changes to styles will result in large amounts of labor to update previous courses. EXAMPLE: N/A (Too lazy to make one up.) SUMMERY: .odt would be very difficult to keep updated and consistent but is very easy for course creators. Plain Text (.txt) ADVANTAGES: Universal format, Everything from a cell phone to an expensive toaster can read text files. bzr and VCS systems can highlight per-line changes Text-to-Speech works well with it and it is more accessible for those with disabilities. DISADVANTAGES: Dull, sometimes hard to read, doesn't support any kind of styling. EXAMPLE: This E-Mail. SUMMERY: Easier to maintain then .odt but the lack of styling makes it a poor choice. Sphinx (.txt) ADVANTAGES: Same as those of Plain Text with the addition of styling using Restructured Text. DISADVANTAGES: Limited translation support, Must be compiled into .html. EXAMPLE: <a href="http://pastebin.com/f58b09150" target="_blank">http://pastebin.com/f58b09150</a> SUMMERY: Not a bad choice but it has limited use outside python projects. Lack of translation support is a major future problem if used. DocBook (.xml) ADVANTAGES: Universal format used by many book publishers. Very supported for conversion into other formats. DISADVANTAGES: XML is very difficult to write, very complex, hard to read and simply not user-friendly. EXAMPLE: <a href="http://pastebin.com/f7d29f1c9" target="_blank">http://pastebin.com/f7d29f1c9</a> SUMMERY: Good choice, but the difficult syntax and lack of WYSIWYG Editors creates a massive barrier to entry. AsciiDoc (.txt) ADVANTAGES: Same advantages of DocBook with the addition of text editing and an easier to read format. DISADVANTAGES: Some may find editing .txt files hard, but I'm not sure there's any way around this. EXAMPLE: <a href="http://pastebin.com/f22ac7b5f" target="_blank">http://pastebin.com/f22ac7b5f</a> SUMMERY: IMO the best choice as it gives all the advantages of DocBook without the difficult syntax or learning curve. -- William Chambers <<a href="mailto:william@bioselement.com">william@bioselement.com</a>> -- Ubuntu-Learning mailing list <a href="mailto:Ubuntu-Learning@lists.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu-Learning@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-learning" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-learning</a> </blockquote></div>