Why bother, anyway?

Since many modern text editors can display text properly regardless of what platform it comes from, you may be wondering if there's really any point in converting files.

Sometimes there isn't. If you're a hacker, and you're writing documentation intended for other hackers, it may be a waste of time to convert. You can assume your audience uses programs that can handle the text appropriately, and won't have a problem converting it manually if need be.

One case where you might want to convert is if you're writing user's guides for software that's meant to be user-friendly. Hard as it may be for us power users to believe, many people find it a hardship just to unzip a software package and find the README file. They may very well lack the tools to fix broken text, and almost certainly lack the knowledge to use them. If we want to communicate with that audience, we need to accomodate their lack of expertise.

Note to old UNIX hands: if you've never had the pleasure (yes, that's sarcasm) of working with DOS and Windows, you may not realize that most Windows users have never seen a good text editor, let alone learned how to use one. If you have a chance, take a look at the Windows Notepad application, and be amazed at what it can't do!

Another case where conversion may be needed is for files that are meant, not to be read by humans, but to be processed automatically. One example is SGML-related files such as DTDs and stylesheets. The ends of lines are significant to SGML parsers, and could cause errors if they are not recognized.

In practice, there are probably very few cases where conversion is necessary. But better safe than sorry.

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