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From: wjin@cs.uh.edu (Woody Jin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 96 19:58:44 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Houston
Lines: 69
Message-ID: <4lgo70$t3r@masala.cc.uh.edu>
References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <tporczykDptpAL.8uG@netcom.com> <4l324m$rjc@web.nmti.com> <317AF906.592C@xeta.com> <4lge7l$nvl@web.nmti.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:814 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46776
In article <4lge7l$nvl@web.nmti.com>, peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva) wrote:
>In article <317AF906.592C@xeta.com>, Tom Crofford <tomc@xeta.com> wrote:
>> Peter da Silva wrote:
>> > I don't know. I find Word and Word Perfect (the 'approved' programs here)
>> > so hostile that I use them only when absolutely required. I can't imagine
>> > doing all my documentation in them... I'd rather write in raw HTML. I
>> > don't have time to play with tools like that (and that's what people do
>> > with them... you get endless macdinking of fonts and spacing and layout
>> > simply because you *can* when it just doesn't *matter*).
>
>> Millions of people successfully use Word and Wordperfect all day, every
>> day.
How true !!! Last year, the computer scientist who got Turing Award
(on that year) came to UH for Distinguished Lecture. He talked about
"Matching Computer Interfaces to Human Limitations". After the
talk, I asked him how he thinks of vi editor.
Then, he replied, "What is vi ?". I was at a loss, but I was able to manage
to answer, "It is a standard Unix editor". Then explained about how good
the MicroSoft Word, and all the nice feature it has (for 5 min. while
walking), and that he is using it all the time and also strongly recommend
to me that I should use it.
Outside of computer science field (like education, philosophy, politics,
literature, ...well, you name it), it looks like that they all use MS Word,
Word Perfect, AmiPro,...etc.
>Certainly. Millions of people successfully use all sorts of bizarre
>technologies quite successfully.
>
>> I have personally
>> written numerous manuals with Word. One of them was over 400 pages long.
>
>I'm sure you have. I can always tell when a manual has been written with
>programs like Word... they have incomplete headers or footers, they don't
>use a consistent style to distinguish code samples and running text, and
>so on. Because to get a consistent style requires more effort than it's
>worth.
But how many people write such manuals ? Millions ? No way.
If they every write manuals
how many times they have to do it during their life cycle ( :) ) ?
There are other professional word processors which can do better than
MS Word in that category (i.e. to writing books).
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.
>Semantic markup is all but impossible in a word processor. They provide
>splendid tools for detailed and accurate formatting of visual elements,
>but that's not the facility that serious document preparation needs.
>
>> Serious users of Word
>> do not 'endlessly macdink' with their fonts.
>
>No. They simply refuse to deal with the problem.
No, they simply don't want to waste their valuable time.
--
Woody Jin
Love is what love does - from Road Less Traveled, M. Peck, 1978
Stupid is what stupid does - from Forrest Gump, 1995
Vi is what vi does,
emacs is what emacs does - me, 1996