[geeks] jvm/bytecode spec?

[der Mouse]

> It's possible to get the whole [JVM spec] ball of wax as a ZIP file,
> but it's still HTML:

>    http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/download/vmspec.2nded.html.tar.gz

At the very least, that'll save me spidering the pages.  Thank you!
(And, turns out it's actually at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jvms/download/vmspec.2nded.html.tar.gz.)

> If that doesn't do it for you, the wood-pulp edition is $55 from
> Amazon.  Amazon.com shows it as in-stock, although Amazon.ca does
> not.

Thanks for the thought, though over-the-Web prices (which is what I
assume you're talking about when you give domain names as if they were
vendors) are irrelevant to me; I do not buy that way.  I'll see if I
can dig up enough info (author, title, etc) to find out what it would
cost to get myself a copy; in many respects I prefer dead trees for
doc, when, as here, I'm not going to be copying any substantial
fraction of it directly into anything machineable.

> As far as web browser being a poor portal for vast quantities of
> text, I've found it to be far better than most anything else outside
> of print.

Must be idiosyncracies of our reading styles.  I still prefer a tool,
such as less, that's designed for reading text.  (When I prefer
softcopy at all, that is.)

> PDF viewers are universally awful, and well-written HTML can usually
> tamed with a stylesheet.

That "tamed" is an appropriate word is an indication of how bad a
format HTML is for the purpose, it seems to me.  A really appropriate
format wouldn't need taming.

> To Sun's credit, though, the HTML they export for offline reading
> tends to be exceptionally sane.

It's still HTML, though, and needs to have <something>the
<somethingelse size=3.1415926>clutter</somethingelse><whoknows/>
stripped</something> out of it in order to be usable.  (Fortunately,
lynx -dump usually gets me close enough that manual fixing of the
remaining botches is feasible in my (admittedly limited) experience.
When I need to enough data that I can't just pick out what I want from
amid the noise by eye, that is.)

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B