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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!imci4!imci3!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mathworks.com!hunter.premier.net!insync!uuneo.neosoft.com!web.nmti.com!peter From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Command languages versus GUIs. Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX Date: 22 Apr 1996 21:51:05 GMT Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI Lines: 35 Message-ID: <4lgv09$3a5@web.nmti.com> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <317AF906.592C@xeta.com> <4lge7l$nvl@web.nmti.com> <4lgo70$t3r@masala.cc.uh.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: sonic.nmti.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:787 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46452 In article <4lgo70$t3r@masala.cc.uh.edu>, Woody Jin <wjin@cs.uh.edu> wrote: > But how many people write such manuals ? Millions ? No way. Of course not. For the correspondence most people do programs like MS-Word are quite adequate, and hiding the details of formatting from them is exactly the right thing to do. Yes, messing with the layout is a waste of time. But if you want to produce professional quality results without spending a lot of time macdinking you can't do better than a markup language. (and don't throw VI at me. Yes, I like VI. I prefer it. But again it's overkill for most people... and there are just as good hand-holding character-cell editors (one we used to use here was quite excellent, always giving the user continual feedback about what state they were in and what options they had) as there are GUI editors... and there are some really horrible GUI editors. Word Perfect, for example, is really a limited markup language with a fancy GUI on top...) > Also, there are many facilities in MS Word that many users don't know > (simply because they don't read manuals AND/OR they don't have time > to do so). Probably what you described above can be done > using some available macros, or by writing in Word Basic macro language. But then you're using it as a markup language! You're going beyond the WYSIWYG model and programming, or using canned programs some programmer has written to implement the style model you need. What you're saying here is, "you're right, WYSIWYG isn't enough... so Word has a command language embedde in it". Which is exactly the point I've been making. The issue isn't GUI versus command languages at all. -- Peter da Silva (NIC: PJD2) `-_-' 1601 Industrial Boulevard Bailey Network Management 'U` Sugar Land, TX 77487-5013 +1 713 274 5180 "Har du kramat din varg idag?" USA Bailey pays for my technical expertise. My opinions probably scare them