Macs Suck..
John William Chambless
Bryan Shelton <br...@phoenix.phoenix.net> wrote:
[ 40 lines of "Macs are great 'cause ya don't gotta be able to type" ]
>(I wish my Mac were a woman so I could make love to it)
That would probably be about your only chance.
PS: Please stop posting your childish MAC-mongering in misc.test.
>
>
--
/* you are not expected to understand this */
John William Chambless
> What is it with you clowns who like your operating systems to be as
>difficult to use as possible? What's wrong with having a useless keyboard
Some of us like to type words on a computer, Bryan. There's life
beyond the JPEG viewer, bud.
>if YOU DON'T NEED THE GODDAMN THING to do the vast majority of daily
>house-keeping chores on the computer, or, for that matter, select options
>whithin an application? Do I have to point out the obvious, that doing
>things like moving files around from one folder/directory to another on
>the Mac is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE FASTER compared to the antiquated DOS?!
Assuming, for the moment, that you actually understand the phrase
"order of magnitude", tell me how the Mac interface is faster.
I've used the Mac, the Winblows file manager and various X file
managers, and NONE are as fast and easy as the command line.
>Oh, yes, this is where DOS users like to point out the few exceptions to
>the rule: yes, del *.* is actually faster than on the Mac. Big damn deal.
>Let's compare ALL the commands from top to bottom; the Mac is the winner
>hands down.
Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
>You guys draw a masochistic pleasure from memorizing umpteen
>different cryptic commands
It's not as hard as it seems to the ignorant. Once you know
how the thing works, it's easy to find how to do things. Especially
if you can read.
>and loboriously typing them out (and frequently
^^^^^^^^^^^--- /* no comment */
>RE-typing them because of the inevitable mistakes). WINDOWS is a lame
>imitation of the Mac that I won't even dignify with further comment. Hey,
I'll agree with that. But what's your point? Neither Winhoze, System 7,
or Xfm offer anything to match the power of the command line.
A generation of marketdroids decided that if computers were easy
for total imbeciles to use, they'd sell more of them. So what?
> Wise up and face the facts: the Mac is a work of genius that
>has caused vast repercussions in this industry. Get with the program!
>
I guess that's why the new PowerMac(tm) commercial is built around
the wonderful fact that you can run Windows programs on it, eh?
What a concept: a toy emulating a turd!
R. Patrick Dockrey
: In article <39a20g$o...@griffin.phoenix.net>,
: Bryan Shelton <br...@phoenix.phoenix.net> wrote:
: [ 40 lines of "Macs are great 'cause ya don't gotta be able to type" ]
: >(I wish my Mac were a woman so I could make love to it)
: That would probably be about your only chance
Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the term "point and click" doesn't it?
Speaker For The Dead
________
| SPQR |
~~~~~~~~
rdoc...@comtch.iea.com
!Productions
John William Chambless <cham...@whale.st.usm.edu> wrote:
>In article <39a20g$o...@griffin.phoenix.net>,
>Bryan Shelton <br...@phoenix.phoenix.net> wrote:
>>Oh, yes, this is where DOS users like to point out the few exceptions to
>>the rule: yes, del *.* is actually faster than on the Mac. Big damn deal.
>>Let's compare ALL the commands from top to bottom; the Mac is the winner
>>hands down.
>
>Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
>a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
>
>How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
As much as I hate the Mac, I have to defend it here. Select "Find",
select "More options", "Date", "greater than" and then the date.
Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
Having said that, they still suck! :)
--
!Productions 1994
GCS -d+ H+ s++:- g+ p? !au a- w+++ v* C+++ UB+++A++++ P++ L++ E+ N+++ K+ !W---
M-- V po- Y+ t++ 5+ jx R G? tv++ D- B--- e+ u** h f r++ !n y+
Ray Cathcart
William Chambless) wrote:
> Some of us like to type words on a computer, Bryan. There's life
> beyond the JPEG viewer, bud.
Okay, so use your cli. I don't have to use my brain, though. I know that
sounds funny, but it IS harder to make a mistake on a Mac then in a CLI.
And if you goof in a CLI with something like "del *.*", you've just made
life hard.
> Assuming, for the moment, that you actually understand the phrase
> "order of magnitude", tell me how the Mac interface is faster.
> I've used the Mac, the Winblows file manager and various X file
> managers, and NONE are as fast and easy as the command line.
PLEASE don't compare File Manager to the Mac's Finder. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
> Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
> a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
Ever hear of Apple Script?
> How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
Cmd-F, type "reorganization", hit enter.
> >You guys draw a masochistic pleasure from memorizing umpteen
> >different cryptic commands
>
> It's not as hard as it seems to the ignorant. Once you know
> how the thing works, it's easy to find how to do things. Especially
> if you can read.
I think his point isn't that it's HARD, but that it's unnecessary and
archaic, not to mention unintuitive. While you are reading manuals, I am
preparing a presentation for a major client. You see?
> I'll agree with that. But what's your point? Neither Winhoze, System 7,
> or Xfm offer anything to match the power of the command line.
How about a command-line emulation? Not that you need it, but it IS there.
Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
> A generation of marketdroids decided that if computers were easy
> for total imbeciles to use, they'd sell more of them. So what?
>
> > Wise up and face the facts: the Mac is a work of genius that
> >has caused vast repercussions in this industry. Get with the program!
> >
> I guess that's why the new PowerMac(tm) commercial is built around
> the wonderful fact that you can run Windows programs on it, eh?
>
> What a concept: a toy emulating a turd!
Actually, it would be a toy emulating a turd emulating a toy on top of
another turd...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ray Cathcart
Drexel University
st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Russ Allbery
>John William Chambless <cham...@whale.st.usm.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
>>a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
>>
>>How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
>
>As much as I hate the Mac, I have to defend it here. Select "Find",
>select "More options", "Date", "greater than" and then the date.
Ah, but we want to copy them into the backup directory too. And on my
system, that's on a different computer 8-). Admittedly, DOS doesn't do very
good with rcp or AFS mounts either.
>Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
>files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
>which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
I'm pretty sure he meant embedded in the file, and in DOS you use a little
public domain utility called grep. DOS as a base operating system sucks,
but there is such a ridiculous amount of freeware available, it becomes
almost useable.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional
division by zero. [Anonymous]
DOMINIC TRISTRAM
shell. It has real pre-emptive multi-tasking (hey you Windows users, I can
format floppies AND do other things at once!). It can run DOS and Windows
(if you really want it to). It can run Mac software - faster than a more expensive
Mac. It has software that is reasonably priced and easy to find. It has
millions of satisfied users who swear by it. It costs just less than 250 pounds
for the basic model, and above-all, it's had all of this since 1985 (when PC's
were lucky to have CGA and Macs were.. well... absent.)
I own, of course, an Amiga.
Dominic
--
______________________________________________
Dominic Tristram - These opinions are
mine, and mine alone. So there.
Read my Mosaic page - www.dcs.aber.ac.uk/~dbt3
----------------------------------------------
Darin Johnson
> sounds funny, but it IS harder to make a mistake on a Mac then in a CLI.
It's also harder to make a mistake if you just leave the Mac turned off.
--
Darin Johnson
djoh...@ucsd.edu
Caution! Under no circumstances confuse the mesh with the
interleave operator, except under confusing circumstances!
Miguel Carrasquer
DOMINIC TRISTRAM <db...@aber.ac.uk> wrote:
>My computer is lovely. It has an intuitive GUI interface, as well as a decent
>shell. It has real pre-emptive multi-tasking (hey you Windows users, I can
>format floppies AND do other things at once!). It can run DOS and Windows
>(if you really want it to). It can run Mac software - faster than a more
>expensive
>Mac. It has software that is reasonably priced and easy to find. It has
>millions of satisfied users who swear by it. It costs just less than 250
>pounds
>for the basic model, and above-all, it's had all of this since 1985 (when PC's
>were lucky to have CGA and Macs were.. well... absent.)
Well, actually they weren't... 1984. (Lisas before that).
>
>I own, of course, an Amiga.
>
--
Miguel Carrasquer ____________________ ~~~
Amsterdam [ ||]~
m...@inter.NL.net ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Robert Watkins
: !Productions <men...@sefl.satelnet.org> writes:
: >John William Chambless <cham...@whale.st.usm.edu> wrote:
: >>
: >>Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
: >>a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
: >>
: >>How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
: >
: >As much as I hate the Mac, I have to defend it here. Select "Find",
: >select "More options", "Date", "greater than" and then the date.
: Ah, but we want to copy them into the backup directory too. And on my
: system, that's on a different computer 8-). Admittedly, DOS doesn't do very
: good with rcp or AFS mounts either.
So, having selected all the files using find, you drag them over to the
backup directory on the remotely mounted server. What's the problem?
: >Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
: >files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
: >which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
: I'm pretty sure he meant embedded in the file, and in DOS you use a little
: public domain utility called grep. DOS as a base operating system sucks,
: but there is such a ridiculous amount of freeware available, it becomes
: almost useable.
Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
--
Robert Watkins b...@it.ntu.edu.au
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers
are around at 9 am, it's because they were up all night.
Jeff Obik Epler
>>Could you tell me where the icon for "Copy all the files more than
>>a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
>>
>>How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
>As much as I hate the Mac, I have to defend it here. Select "Find",
>select "More options", "Date", "greater than" and then the date.
>Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
>files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
>which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
I think he was talking about the files containing the word in their
body, not their filename. But we're talking about real OSs here...
find / -print | xargs grep -l reorganization | xargs <whatever>
Of course, this will run the disk a little bit...
>Having said that, they still suck! :)
Well yeah. In Our Humble Opinions. All the same, I still end up
typing a letter or short paper on them sometimes..
Jeff
--
____ "And if I smile please tell me some bad news
\BI/ before I laugh and act like a fool"
\/ -The Who "Behind Blue Eyes"
grep -vi obik Running Linux 1.1 -- Free Unix for 386+ machines
Peter Seebach
>Ever hear of Apple Script?
Oh, yeah, and it's much less likely that you'll typo on a point-and-click
keyboard, but either this is no longer point-n-click (killing your point),
or it's pretty ugly.
>> How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
>Cmd-F, type "reorganization", hit enter.
No, he meant the result of 'find . -type f -print | xargs grep -l
reorganization'
(where -l is applicable), i.e., find all files where the *file* contains
'reorganization'
>I think his point isn't that it's HARD, but that it's unnecessary and
>archaic, not to mention unintuitive. While you are reading manuals, I am
>preparing a presentation for a major client. You see?
Yup. And while you are still preparing your presentation, and moving the
mouse, and letting go of the mouse to type a word, and moving the mouse,
and moving the mouse, and moving the mouse, and clicking occasionally, I've
finished my first two.
We benchmarked it in college; the first document takes longer in nroff/tex/
whatever you use/ than in MS WORD for the Mac. The seocnd takes much much
less time. By about three documents, for simple work, the tex style
is faster.
It's faster long before the end of a reasonable-sized work, such as a 50+
page paper with figures, diagrams, and an index.
Admittedly, you can learn arithmetic much more quickly than I learned
calculus. Care to do physics using only standard issue arithmetic?
Didn't think so.
>How about a command-line emulation? Not that you need it, but it IS there.
>Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
>anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
You can't under DOS; it's broken. What you can do:
1. Specify behaviors*. I can say '-f' to mean do this *NOW*, dammit.
I can say '-r' to mean 'and everything under it'. You can't easily
specify behavior with a Mac. It's just given that it behaves the way
it does.
2. Automate tasks. Come up with a sane *point and click only* way to
move every file named *.foo to *.bar in a tree. Very very difficult.
In unix, for instance:
for i in `find . -name "*.foo" -print`
do mv $i ${i%.foo}.bar
done
Neat, eh?
3. Filter. Not every application has to be able to sort. Not every
every application needs to be able to count lines. Not every application
needs to be able to match patterns.
Those are the obvious ones. There's many more. And, once you've discovered
how nice it is to be able to perform vast, sweeping things quickly, you'll
love command line editing.
Assume, on a mac, you have a fifteen-step sequence of points and clicks to
move one file deeply nested to another file deeply nested. Let's assume
you click wrong, and select '102694' instead of '101994' - five levels up.
In a CLI environment, you edit your previous line, and you're done.
In a point-and-click environment, you close N windows and open N other
windows. Fun.
> Ray Cathcart
> Drexel University
> st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu
-seebs
--
Peter Seebach - se...@solutions.solon.com -- se...@intran.xerox.com
C/Unix proto-wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help.
!Productions
Ray Cathcart <st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> wrote:
>In article <39haln$28...@whale.st.usm.edu>, cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John
>Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
>anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
How about this?
cat $* | tr -sc A-Za-z '\012' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail
Can Finder do that? (If you don't know what it does, look it up! :)
Russ Allbery
>Russ Allbery (r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>: Ah, but we want to copy them into the backup directory too. And on my
>: system, that's on a different computer 8-). Admittedly, DOS doesn't do very
>: good with rcp or AFS mounts either.
>
>So, having selected all the files using find, you drag them over to the
>backup directory on the remotely mounted server. What's the problem?
The Mac can't mount the remote server. Unless, of course, you're aware of
an AFS client for a Mac; if you are, there are a lot of people who would
love to know about it.
Admittedly, if we're talking about a Mac vs. DOS argument, this is rather
irrelevant, since DOS can't do it either. Unix, however, can...Mac's
have a real problem with connectivity compared to Unix systems. Linux now
has an AFS client, at least in beta-test, so the Intel architecture can do
it. It isn't precisely easy, but it's at least possible.
>: I'm pretty sure he meant embedded in the file, and in DOS you use a little
>: public domain utility called grep. DOS as a base operating system sucks,
>: but there is such a ridiculous amount of freeware available, it becomes
>: almost useable.
>
>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
command in DOS and Unix?
Look, as I've said in other threads (I'm reading this from
alt.folklore.computers, so they may not be threads on your newsgroup of
choice), I consider the whole "which operating system is better" debate to
be rather pointless, since so much of it depends on exactly what you're
trying to do. I'm just trying to point out that the Mac isn't some kind of
universal cure-all, or is necessarily the best interface in existance for
all users. There are things that you can do on other platforms that are
either impossible or extremely difficult on a Mac. For users, unlike me,
who don't have to do those things, the Mac may be a great interface.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view
without the proper training. [Douglas Adams]
Ray Cathcart
(!Productions) wrote:
> How about this?
>
> cat $* | tr -sc A-Za-z '\012' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail
>
> Can Finder do that? (If you don't know what it does, look it up! :)
>
You know very well I have no clue what that means :-) Tell me, and maybe I
can send back the equivelant Finder command...
Robert Watkins
: In article <st93z5dw-061...@sn207030.resnet.drexel.edu>,
: Ray Cathcart <st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> wrote:
: >In article <39haln$28...@whale.st.usm.edu>, cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John
: >How about a command-line emulation? Not that you need it, but it IS there.
: >Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
: >anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
: How about this?
: cat $* | tr -sc A-Za-z '\012' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail
: Can Finder do that? (If you don't know what it does, look it up! :)
A) Yep, Finder can do that. Okay, it's not built in, but you could write a
program to do it. (And that's all that the above are, are programs).
B) How often do you need a list of the 5 or so most common words in the
input files with the number of occurences, anyway? I mean, it doesn't even
tell you which files they came from! (Okay, so you could do them one at a
time...)
: --
: !Productions 1994
: GCS -d+ H+ s++:- g+ p? !au a- w+++ v* C+++ UB+++A++++ P++ L++ E+ N+++ K+ !W---
: M-- V po- Y+ t++ 5+ jx R G? tv++ D- B--- e+ u** h f r++ !n y+
--
D.Young
>My computer is lovely. It has an intuitive GUI interface, as well as a decent
>shell. It has real pre-emptive multi-tasking (hey you Windows users, I can
>format floppies AND do other things at once!). It can run DOS and Windows
>(if you really want it to). It can run Mac software - faster than a more expensive
>Mac. It has software that is reasonably priced and easy to find. It has
>millions of satisfied users who swear by it. It costs just less than 250 pounds
>for the basic model, and above-all, it's had all of this since 1985 (when PC's
>were lucky to have CGA and Macs were.. well... absent.)
>
>I own, of course, an Amiga.
>
>Dominic
>
It just such a crying shame that your power supply goes fritz on you every time
you try to add a new nit of hardware.
Flames will be used to warm marshmallows.
Jeff Robertson
> In article <39haln$28...@whale.st.usm.edu>, cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John
> William Chambless) wrote:
> > Assuming, for the moment, that you actually understand the phrase
> > "order of magnitude", tell me how the Mac interface is faster.
> > I've used the Mac, the Winblows file manager and various X file
> > managers, and NONE are as fast and easy as the command line.
> PLEASE don't compare File Manager to the Mac's Finder. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
> >
> > It's not as hard as it seems to the ignorant. Once you know
> > how the thing works, it's easy to find how to do things. Especially
> > if you can read.
[....]
> How about a command-line emulation? Not that you need it, but it IS there.
> Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
> anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
PLEASE don't take DOS as the representative example of all CLI's.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
--
Jeff Robertson <jrob...@ua1ix.ua.edu>, <jrob...@job.cba.ua.edu>
http://www.cba.ua.edu/people/jroberts/jroberts.html
GCS/MU/O -d+ H++ -p+ C++ U+ e+ E u* s+/-- n--- h-- f+ g@ w+ t++ y-(*)
John William Chambless
Ray Cathcart <st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> wrote:
]>> I guess that's why the new PowerMac(tm) commercial is built around
]>> the wonderful fact that you can run Windows programs on it, eh?
]>> What a concept: a toy emulating a turd!
>Actually, it would be a toy emulating a turd emulating a toy on top of
>another turd...
>
I stand corrected.
Your characterization is more accurate and fair than mine was.
Stuart Van Onselen
since these two computers dominate the home computer market rather
convinvingly, this whole market becomes dreary.
PC's are hampered by 15-20 YEARS of backward compatibility - to a degree,
their CPU's are compatible with the 8080! For crying out loud - let's not
turn this into a RISC/CISC debate, but the Pentium does carry a ludicrous
amount of useless baggage around with it.
Let's not even talk about the principle operating systems for PC's - if I
start bitching about Microsoft, I'll soon have you all falling asleep due to
the boring length of my tirade. And OS/2 also makes quite a few compromises
in the name of backward compatibility.
Mac's are tyrannical - programming them is diffficult (hard to get info and
tools) and using them imaginatively is difficult (restrictive OS). Their
architectures are inefficient, and they lack proper multitasking. At least
they use Motorola CPU's! I must say, though, that all my info on Mac's is
second hand - I couldn't afford one!
Alternatives on the home computer front?
UNIX - Usually runs on PC's anyway, and, while VERY powerful, is also very
complex, resource hungry and unfriendly (still prefer it over DOS, no
question!)
AMIGA - GREAT machine, but underappreciated, poorly marketed, and run into
the ground by incompetent marketers. Sigh!
So you see, I am more than a little disillusioned by the whole scene. I am
sure that a zillion happy PC and Mac owners will promptly try to make me see
the error of my beliefs, but they'll have try REALLY hard.
--
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Stuart van Onselen g91v...@cs.ru.ac.za Rhodes U, South Africa |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me! |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
| As my views are clearly superior to those of my institution, they |
| cannot be assumed to coincide in any way. |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
John William Chambless
Jeff Robertson <jrob...@ua1ix.ua.edu> wrote:
]>> Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
]>> anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
>PLEASE don't take DOS as the representative example of all CLI's.
>PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
>
Indeed. When I do data analysis at work, I find that I can do a lot
of it from the Unix prompt without even starting an application.
With nothing more than csh, grep, and awk, you can do a lot.
The situation is even better since I have grep and [g]awk on my DOS
machine, and have my Unix home directory NFS-mounted to my PC.
...which brings us back to the topic:
GUIs are great for the limited subset of functions that they
present, but a lot of us have to do a lot of adhockery. A CLI offers
the use of a carefully-designed set of tools, which, along with
pipes and redirection, let me do whatever is needed with a minimum
of hassle. A GUI is faster when what you want to do is a menu choice,
but they don't cope well with the unusual.
Alexander John Batyi
>Robert Watkins <b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au> writes:
>>Russ Allbery (r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
>I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
>programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
>command in DOS and Unix?
I have all three and I can't even find the Command Line Interface on
my Mac IIci! You all can keep your meeses and such. I find it much
more valuable to be able to type in multi-line commands with pipes and
loops to accomplish complex tasks on the fly. If I find the task
is repetetive, it is MUCH easier to enter the multi-liner into a text
editor, chmod +x the file and stick it in a bin dir in my PATH. Then
I can tap a few keys and viola! Faster than you can grab your mouse...
To even get a program in my HandsOff menu is a tougher job. That is
if I could learn how to put something into program form on the Mac!
What do you need? So far by asking around I have found out you need
something called a toolbox or some shit. I think that that even costs
extra! Geez, love my mac huh? These nuts obviously don't do any
real work other than application work on their machines. If someone
out there wants to let me in on the secret and tell me how to actually
use this preprogrammed piece of crap please do. X-windows is easier to
program!
If only they had ProTools and Midi Timepiece II for Unix...
Oh, and why do all the manuals keep warning me to save things
often? The Mac locks up alot, that's why! My Linux box
(and every Unix I have ever run) needs a reason to lock up.
This thing doesn't according to my manuals. They just lose
it every once and a while. DUH! Don't tell me Ye Old Init
Conflict either.
Thank you Mr. Ed Wells for turning me onto Unix and C in the early 80's
when I was still writing with assembler and TI Basic on my TI-99/4a.
Gee, said all that and didn't even have to mention MessyDOS. :-)
The only reason I even know how to use DOS is because of all my
sheeplike friends who fell into place behind Big Blue. What would
the world be like if the CP/M guy DIDN'T have a previous engagement
unlike Mr. Gates or if they had the sense to allow him a life and
schedule a different meeting time/date? WOW and imagine if they
picked Motorola instead of Intel! Cheap 680x0 hardware and expensive
*86 parts? Would there even be a 286? How could so few idiots screw
so many people for a couple of billion lousy bucks?
A OGRE
>In article <39khcc$o...@sefl.satelnet.org>,
>!Productions <men...@sefl.satelnet.org> wrote:
>> [og...@netcom.com wrote]:
>>>grep reorganisation *
>>
>>But all that will do is display a bunch of lines with "reorganisation" in
>>them somewhere. It won't tell you what file it was in, which was the
>>original point of the exercise...
>Wrong.
It will show you the name of each file that contains reorganisation,
plus each line that contains the phrase. If you also want line
NUMBERS, you merely have to add the -n flag.
>Sheesh I wish people would bother to do research on the topic before
>bothering to argue about something.
What he said.
--
Oh? grrrr!
Alistair James Robert Young
>GUIs are great for the limited subset of functions that they
>present, but a lot of us have to do a lot of adhockery. A CLI offers
>the use of a carefully-designed set of tools, which, along with
>pipes and redirection, let me do whatever is needed with a minimum
>of hassle. A GUI is faster when what you want to do is a menu choice,
>but they don't cope well with the unusual.
>
So why not do what I do under OS/2 ... USE BOTH! Use the GUI for simple
things (run my wordprocessor on this document, delete this file, copy
this other file, format this floppy), and then when you need to do
a lot of assorted piping, redirection, et al ad naus., start up a command
line window and type away! Advantages of both, problems of neither...
Well, *I* think it makes sense...
Alistair
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alistair Young -- Arkane Systems Software Development & PC Consultancy
The opinions above are my company's, because I OWN it!
[Development for OS/2 only!] Contact: aj...@st-and.ac.uk
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" - Anonymous
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A OGRE
>Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
>files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
>which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
uhh,
grep reorganisation *
A unix command, I'm sure there's grep for DOS too...(probably have to
use *.* for the silly thing to work right)
I think there's a sweep command for DOS if you want to do it
recursively, something like
sweep grep reorganisation *
to check all the files in every sub-directory of the current one.
I most likely have the syntax wrong, I don't actually use DOS.
--
Joe Rumsey <og...@netcom.com> ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ogre/home.html
Ray Cathcart
(Jeff Robertson) wrote:
> PLEASE don't take DOS as the representative example of all CLI's.
> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
I guess you got me there...
Ray Cathcart
William Chambless) wrote:
> Indeed. When I do data analysis at work, I find that I can do a lot
> of it from the Unix prompt without even starting an application.
> With nothing more than csh, grep, and awk, you can do a lot.
> The situation is even better since I have grep and [g]awk on my DOS
> machine, and have my Unix home directory NFS-mounted to my PC.
> ...which brings us back to the topic:
> GUIs are great for the limited subset of functions that they
> present, but a lot of us have to do a lot of adhockery. A CLI offers
> the use of a carefully-designed set of tools, which, along with
> pipes and redirection, let me do whatever is needed with a minimum
> of hassle. A GUI is faster when what you want to do is a menu choice,
> but they don't cope well with the unusual.
There are AT LEAST three grep-like utilities for the Mac.
Ray Cathcart
djoh...@arnold.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) wrote:
> > Okay, so use your cli. I don't have to use my brain, though. I know that
> > sounds funny, but it IS harder to make a mistake on a Mac then in a CLI.
>
> It's also harder to make a mistake if you just leave the Mac turned off.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) Funny, but not a good point...
Karl A. Krueger
>a day old to the backup directory" is in the Finder? I'm so clueless...
Command-F, select "date modified", select "is before", enter yesterday's
date, click "all at once", and click "OK". Command-D to make copies,
then drag them (all at once!) to the backup folder. Not hard.
>How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
Command-F, "name", "contains", enter "reorganization"
>I guess that's why the new PowerMac(tm) commercial is built around
>the wonderful fact that you can run Windows programs on it, eh?
Sure ... to move the DOS/Windorks to Mac.
Mac has many levels ... you can run it like a moron, always do the "easy
install", then just run your applications ... or you can run it like an
expert, reconfigure it to Do What I Mean, get new utilities, patches, and
the like ... tell me, what was that patch for Linux or MSDOG called that
does idle-time recompression -- WITHOUT changing the structure of the whole
filesystem? What was that program that lets you edit almost the *entire
interface* of nearly any program? For that matter, how many good word
processors are shipping for Linux?
How about your sound support? Or multimedia? I can run Mosaic on my
Mac; can you run Hypercard on your UNIX machine? I can use TCP/IP; can
you use AppleTalk? How many MSDOG/Windork machines can parse both
TrueType *and* PostScript fonts?
Expandability: my PowerBook Blackbird can be expanded to PowerPC; can
your IBM PC-compatible be expanded to an RS/6000?
Face it: MSDOS/Windows and the '86 architecture are obsolete; it's only
a matter of time until they die out. UNIX is too obscure for real users;
it's a sysadmin's system -- job security through snob obscurity.
--
--
-><- Karl A. Krueger -><- ka...@simons-rock.edu -><- 413/528-7675 -><-
-><- -> The opinions expressed in this message are mine alone <- -><-
-> Society, Macintosh, Internet Culture, Liberty, Insanity, Fnord! <-
!Productions
>!Productions (men...@sefl.satelnet.org) wrote:
>>Or "Find", "Contains" (the default) and type it in. (Unless you mean
>>files that have the word "reorganisation" actually embedded in the file,
>>which isn't all that easy in DOS, either.)
>
>uhh,
>
>grep reorganisation *
But all that will do is display a bunch of lines with "reorganisation" in
them somewhere. It won't tell you what file it was in, which was the
original point of the exercise...
>A unix command, I'm sure there's grep for DOS too...(probably have to
>use *.* for the silly thing to work right)
There's grep for everything except the Mac. :)
John William Chambless
]>>grep reorganisation *
>But all that will do is display a bunch of lines with "reorganisation" in
>them somewhere. It won't tell you what file it was in, which was the
>original point of the exercise...
Wrong. The example ogre gives will, in fact return filenames associated
with the lines it finds. The only time grep doesn't give the filename
is if it's only searching one file, as in:
grep foo bar.c
Otherwise it gives each filename with the lines it selects. This is true
at least on SunOS, AIX, and with Borland's grep.
I don't have a Mac handy right now; does FIND let you search for
lines (or files) NOT containing a given string? How about regular
expressions?
Of course, with Unix, you can use pipes, backquoting, etc to say
"delete every file containing the word 'Microsoft' from this file system"
in about a line of code. Just as an example, mind you....
--
"Obviously unlike you people, I don't have time to edit the newsgroups line
for every single article I post." -- ma...@cs.yale.edu
Eric Remy
In article <1994Nov7.1...@rescon.wells.com>,
Alexander John Batyi <b...@rescon.wells.com> wrote:
>In article <39k4ed$3...@Radon.Stanford.EDU> r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Russ Allbery) writes:
>>Robert Watkins <b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au> writes:
>>>Russ Allbery (r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>>>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
>>I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
>>programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
>>command in DOS and Unix?
>
>I have all three and I can't even find the Command Line Interface on
>my Mac IIci! You all can keep your meeses and such. I find it much
>more valuable to be able to type in multi-line commands with pipes and
>loops to accomplish complex tasks on the fly. If I find the task
>is repetetive, it is MUCH easier to enter the multi-liner into a text
>editor, chmod +x the file and stick it in a bin dir in my PATH. Then
>I can tap a few keys and viola! Faster than you can grab your
mouse...
How is this different from using Applescript? Gee: enter a
multi-liner in an editor and execute it. Must be missing something
here. (Yes, I use Unix a lot- I do like the command line.)
>To even get a program in my HandsOff menu is a tougher job. That is
>if I could learn how to put something into program form on the Mac!
>What do you need? So far by asking around I have found out you need
>something called a toolbox or some shit. I think that that even costs
>extra! Geez, love my mac huh?
Do you even have the tiniest piece of a clue? Obviously not. The
toolbox is the set of routines in the Mac ROMs which can be accessed
via most programming languages. Applescript comes with 7.5.
> These nuts obviously don't do any
>real work other than application work on their machines. If someone
>out there wants to let me in on the secret and tell me how to actually
>use this preprogrammed piece of crap please do. X-windows is easier to
>program!
Obviously, if you don't know what the Mac toolbox is, you've never
programmed a Mac.
As a matter of fact, I do do application work on my Mac: I do most of
my programming in Unix. The applications I use on the Mac are nicer
than their Unix equivalents. What's wrong with using a machine to do
work on?
>
>If only they had ProTools and Midi Timepiece II for Unix...
>Oh, and why do all the manuals keep warning me to save things
>often? The Mac locks up alot, that's why! My Linux box
>(and every Unix I have ever run) needs a reason to lock up.
>This thing doesn't according to my manuals. They just lose
>it every once and a while. DUH! Don't tell me Ye Old Init
>Conflict either.
No, the Mac lacks protected memory. This is (IMHO) the Mac's single
biggest flaw. Unix is quite a bit more stable because of it, but
nowhere near crashproof. Ever had NFS server problems?
> WOW and imagine if they
>picked Motorola instead of Intel! Cheap 680x0 hardware and expensive
>*86 parts?
No, wouldn't have happened. The 68000 was available in 1979, but the
glue chips weren't.
> Would there even be a 286? How could so few idiots screw
>so many people for a couple of billion lousy bucks?
--
Eric R. edr...@fermion.Stanford.EDU Department of Chemistry
"Any desired property can be calculated from the Schrodinger equation of the
system. The solution is left as an exercise for the reader." JIR, 3rd ed.
Bruce Ediger
>Command-F, select "date modified", select "is before", enter yesterday's
>date, click "all at once", and click "OK". Command-D to make copies,
>then drag them (all at once!) to the backup folder. Not hard.
Maybe not, but it's sure as hell not very intuitive, either. Maybe
even less intuitive than the "grep" command line posted earlier.
In fact, isn't the explicit use of some many "keyboard shortcuts" a
tacit admission of the inadequacy of the point-n-click way of doing things?
Best regards,
Bruce Ediger
DoN. Nichols
>Robert Watkins <b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au> writes:
[ ... ]
>>So, having selected all the files using find, you drag them over to the
>>backup directory on the remotely mounted server. What's the problem?
>
>The Mac can't mount the remote server. Unless, of course, you're aware of
>an AFS client for a Mac; if you are, there are a lot of people who would
>love to know about it.
>
>Admittedly, if we're talking about a Mac vs. DOS argument, this is rather
>irrelevant, since DOS can't do it either. Unix, however, can...Mac's
>have a real problem with connectivity compared to Unix systems. Linux now
>has an AFS client, at least in beta-test, so the Intel architecture can do
>it. It isn't precisely easy, but it's at least possible.
Well ... I don't know about the point and drag bit on MS-DOS, but at
least the remotely mounted filesystems are a possibility. I have PC-NFS
(though I have an antique version of DOS, and am not about to bother
upgrading it for the three times per year (average) that it's turned on),
and it allows me to NFS-mount filesystems from my several Sun (and clones)
boxen.
Believe me - I don't normally make a point of defending MS-DOS, but
with the right software assistance, it can do a bit more.
Now, we wait for someone to point out a similar package for the Mac.
--
Email: <dnic...@d-and-d.com> | ...!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols
Donald Nichols (DoN.) | Voice (Days): (703) 704-2280 (Eves): (703) 938-4564
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
!Productions
Alistair James Robert Young <aj...@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>So why not do what I do under OS/2 ... USE BOTH! Use the GUI for simple
>things (run my wordprocessor on this document, delete this file, copy
>this other file, format this floppy), and then when you need to do
>a lot of assorted piping, redirection, et al ad naus., start up a command
>line window and type away! Advantages of both, problems of neither...
>
>Well, *I* think it makes sense...
Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :) (The Amiga's CLI/GUI
combo is even better than running a DOS window under OS/2 - you can
launch the same programs with either method, etc. etc. - the two are
completely integrated rather than one sitting on top of the other.)
AMIGA! :)
Russ Allbery
cure-alls either.
Karl A. Krueger <ka...@simons-rock.edu> writes:
[ Lots of things that the Mac is better at. ]
I could argue with a couple of those, but let's take the opposite approach:
What are the anonymous ftp servers like for a Mac? How about true AFS
mounts (not through AppleShare)? Can you access your Mac remotely? What
about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
displaying your Mac screen on another computer? How about receiving mail on
your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
incoming mail arrives)?
How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading? What if I want to
save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
line script like I can under Linux?
How about the software development environment? What are the system
libraries for networking like? Are there the equivalent of lex and yacc
available? Can I compile the *huge* amount of available free software on
the Net, like MUSH clients, nethack, etc., on my Mac? Can I easily write
programs that accept incoming network connections and serve data, like I can
on Linux with inetd?
And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
*no* money *whatsoever*?
(You will notice that I, like most people on this thread, are not trying to
argue DOS/Windows. But you decided to pick on Linux too, so.... 8-) )
Again, different operating systems for different tasks. You like the Mac
for what you use your computer for; I prefer Linux for what I use my
computer for.
>Face it: MSDOS/Windows and the '86 architecture are obsolete; it's only
>a matter of time until they die out.
The x86 architecture is not limited to DOS/Windows. I can't stand
DOS/Windows, but my 386 serves me well; it handles multiple users and an
anonymous ftp site, has been running for almost a month without a single
problem, I can access it from anywhere I want, and all my favorite software
runs on it. And yes, I use Macs for word processing (which is a very small
part of what I do with computers).
>UNIX is too obscure for real users;
>it's a sysadmin's system -- job security through snob obscurity.
Define "real". Unix is too obscure for casual users, for users who aren't
heavily into networking and network applications, and for users who aren't
comfortable maintaining their computer. Unix, however, does exactly what
you tell it to, does it quickly and efficiently, handles networking without
a seam, and is as stable as a rock (as long as you aren't using Solaris
8-)).
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories
that are most moving. [J.R.R. Tolkien]
Robert Watkins
: In article <ogreCyv...@netcom.com>, A OGRE <og...@netcom.com> wrote:
: >A unix command, I'm sure there's grep for DOS too...(probably have to
: >use *.* for the silly thing to work right)
: There's grep for everything except the Mac. :)
Not so... I have a copy of grep on my Mac.
Miguel Farah F.
acceptable M cathegory (M-):
Macs suck. All real geeks have a character prompt.
--
MIGUEL FARAH * GCS/O -d+ H s++:+>s++: !g p2+ au-
mfa...@ing.puc.cl * a23 w v++ C++ UL+>++++ P+ L>L++
mfa...@lascar.puc.cl (mail only) * 3- E--- N+++ K+++ W--(+) M- V--
http://torvalds.ing.puc.cl/~mfarah * po+ Y+ t++@ !5 !j R G? tv b+ D++
#include <disclaimer.h> * B- e+* u+ h! f+ r-- n---(+) y?
-----------------------------------*----------------------------------
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Robert Watkins
[ Chomp ]
: Well ... I don't know about the point and drag bit on MS-DOS, but at
: least the remotely mounted filesystems are a possibility. I have PC-NFS
: (though I have an antique version of DOS, and am not about to bother
: upgrading it for the three times per year (average) that it's turned on),
: and it allows me to NFS-mount filesystems from my several Sun (and clones)
: boxen.
: Believe me - I don't normally make a point of defending MS-DOS, but
: with the right software assistance, it can do a bit more.
: Now, we wait for someone to point out a similar package for the Mac.
Okay, I will. NFS is available on Macs as well. (Matter of fact, is there
any platform it isn't available for?)
Alistair James Robert Young
!Productions <men...@sefl.satelnet.org> wrote:
>In article <39m1ja$g...@calvin.st-and.ac.uk>,
>Alistair James Robert Young <aj...@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>>So why not do what I do under OS/2 ... USE BOTH! Use the GUI for simple
>>things (run my wordprocessor on this document, delete this file, copy
>>this other file, format this floppy), and then when you need to do
>>a lot of assorted piping, redirection, et al ad naus., start up a command
>>line window and type away! Advantages of both, problems of neither...
>>
>>Well, *I* think it makes sense...
>
>Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :) (The Amiga's CLI/GUI
>combo is even better than running a DOS window under OS/2 - you can
>launch the same programs with either method, etc. etc. - the two are
>completely integrated rather than one sitting on top of the other.)
>AMIGA! :)
>
window, type the name of a GUI program - it runs! :-). And with a little
bit of help from 4OS/2 (an addon which just about everyone has), just type
the name of the data file at the CLI prompt and it runs the fancy windowed
wordprocessor with the data file loaded. A waste of time, to be sure (long
filenames and a CLI do not get along well, IMHO), but IT CAN BE DONE!!
Steven D. Marcotte
>I have all three and I can't even find the Command Line Interface on
>my Mac IIci! You all can keep your meeses and such. I find it much
>more valuable to be able to type in multi-line commands with pipes and
>loops to accomplish complex tasks on the fly. If I find the task
>is repetetive, it is MUCH easier to enter the multi-liner into a text
>editor, chmod +x the file and stick it in a bin dir in my PATH. Then
>I can tap a few keys and viola! Faster than you can grab your mouse...
>To even get a program in my HandsOff menu is a tougher job
>That is
>if I could learn how to put something into program form on the Mac!
>What do you need?
A compiler, Symantec C++ or Codewarrior, either one will do.
>So far by asking around I have found out you need something called a
>toolbox or some shit.
The toolbox is in the ROMs, so you'll need those.
>I think that that even costs extra!
Not unless Apple started selling computers peice by peice like PCs.
>Geez, love my mac huh? These nuts obviously don't do any
>real work other than application work on their machines.
obviously
--
Steven Marcotte
sdo...@cis.ksu.edu
Karl Thomas
>In article <39m1ja$g...@calvin.st-and.ac.uk>,
>Alistair James Robert Young <aj...@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :) (The Amiga's CLI/GUI
>combo is even better than running a DOS window under OS/2 - you can
>launch the same programs with either method, etc. etc. - the two are
>completely integrated rather than one sitting on top of the other.)
>AMIGA! :)
Two little problems -- First, where can I buy one of these and if I can
buy one, will it be as fast as a 6100/60. Second, where can I find
programs such as Xpress, FrameMaker, Excel, PhotoShop....
Karl Thomas
>Disclaimer: I do not agree with the subject line. But they aren't
>cure-alls either.
>Karl A. Krueger <ka...@simons-rock.edu> writes:
>What are the anonymous ftp servers like for a Mac? How about true AFS
>mounts (not through AppleShare)? Can you access your Mac remotely? What
>about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
>displaying your Mac screen on another computer? How about receiving mail on
>your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
>incoming mail arrives)?
You can use ARA (Apple Remote Access) to access the Mac and the programs
remotely. Eudora is an excellent mail-reader that does all you said.
>How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading? What if I want to
>save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
>dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
>line script like I can under Linux?
I'm not sure but I think there is a newsreader for the Mac that supports
threads. Using Applescript the above script should be simple.
>And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
>application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
>*no* money *whatsoever*?
You mean you can get freeware spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, DTP
apps, etc. for Linux? Sure you can get all of your apps free as long as you
can settle for non-commercial quality software. How are those Unix
games, btw?
Pete Gontier
cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John William Chambless) wrote:
> I don't have a Mac handy right now; does FIND let you search for
> lines (or files) NOT containing a given string? How about regular
> expressions?
It does none of those things; it doesn't even search the contents of
files; it only searches the file names.
> Of course, with Unix, you can use pipes, backquoting, etc to say
> "delete every file containing the word 'Microsoft' from this file system"
> in about a line of code. Just as an example, mind you....
With Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, you can use pipes, backquoting, etc...
You can even search the contents of text files.
Do you have to pay extra for it? Yes.
--
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Justin Murdock
error -43 Can't save the file, because the file doesn't exist
Go figure.
--
~ o - There is nothing a vulture hates more than a glass eye.
| -
\_/ - Justin Murdock, +44 (0)1203 337865. This man is strange
Troy Daniels
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,alt.folklore.computers
From: ab...@freenet.carleton.ca (Paul Tomblin)
Organization: Tomblin Computer Consulting, Akron, Ohio and Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 19:31:42 GMT
In a previous article, justin@physics20 (Justin R. Bendich) said:
>In article <39k29m$j...@blackice.winternet.com>,
>Peter Seebach <se...@solutions.solon.com> wrote:
>[...]
>>Come up with a sane *point and click only* way to
>>move every file named *.foo to *.bar in a tree. Very very difficult.
>>In unix, for instance:
>>for i in `find . -name "*.foo" -print`
>>do mv $i ${i%.foo}.bar
>>done
This is probably not the most optimal way of doing it - but then that's the
beauty of unix: finding yet another way of doing the same thing.
>Much as i prefer unix, this is something VMS makes MUCH easier:
>
>$ rename *.foo .bar
Don't you have to say rename/recursive or something like that?
That works just fine. However, the following UNIX command is almost impossible
on VMS:
% mv finger.pln .plan
The obvious ( $ rename finger.pln .plan ) creates finger.plan, not .plan.
A friends was trying to do this a few weeks ago. I eventually figured out
a complicated way that I can't remember anymore. I know that it involved
redefining sys$input and/or sys$output. (Loading into an editor and saving
it under a new name was much quicker in any case.)
>manually. It's not ALWAYS a disadvantage...) Now, WHY is the find command
>so goddamn cumbersome? I doubt that i've seen a single example that didn't
>use the -name and -print options, so why does find make me type them?
Because if you use it that way, you can create an alias or function, and not
interfere with me, who almost NEVER uses '-name'. But I do have an alias
that does a 'find . -type f -print | xargs', because I do that all the time.
--
Paul Tomblin, Freenet News Administrator. Currently living in Akron, Ohio.
<a href=http://watt.oedison.com:8080/~tomblinp/>My home page</a>
"There. I have wasted a lot of bandwidth and probably not answered your
question." - dino the dinosaur (di...@euclid.colorado.edu) on alt.folklore.urban
Troy Daniels
tdan...@fnald.fnal.gov
We don't need no stinkin' .sig
Dik T. Winter
> Much as i prefer unix, this is something VMS makes MUCH easier:
>
> $ rename *.foo .bar
>
> manually. It's not ALWAYS a disadvantage...)
Indeed, not always. But I do not trust all application programmers to
properly and consistently expand globs.
> Now, WHY is the find command
> so goddamn cumbersome? I doubt that i've seen a single example that didn't
> use the -name and -print options, so why does find make me type them?
find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
No -name and -print. (And /dev/null is present so that grep will print
filenames. A bit of a wart, it ought to be an option for grep to print
or not print filenames. There are also instances that I do
grep foo * | sed -e 's/^[^:]*://'
to remove the filenames.) But, yes, find is cumbersome; but try dd one
of these days.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924098
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: d...@cwi.nl
Alistair James Robert Young
Hang on a sec...I didn't write that! :-) I'm the OS/2 advocate, not the
Amiga one!
But I'd be willing to bet that OS/2 for SMP could be as fast as a 6100/60...
DarkStar
> > I guess that's why the new PowerMac(tm) commercial is built around
> > the wonderful fact that you can run Windows programs on it, eh?
That's not really fair. It's a basic concept that to get widespread
acceptance you need to hook into something that's familiar to people.
-- Tieing Christmas into a pagan holiday;
-- Early radio emulated productions of the live theatre stage;
-- Early TV emulated radio and movies.
It's easier to get people to use their familiar programs on a new system
than to force them to leap into a whole new way. The original Windows
would have been better off without backwards-DOS compatibility from a
technical, nextstep viewpoint; but definately NOT from a marketing
viewpoint. That's just the human nature is.
(I know that's not your message, Ray, but I couldn't find the orig
*grin*)
--
DarkStar <dark...@fred.com> is too lazy to make h{is,er} own sigfile.
The SYSTEM 0PERATOR is too lazy to change this one terribly often.
Radio Free Fredbox, where entropy reigns supreme -- +1 907 344 8437
Russ Allbery
>layers run over the network? Sure.
So you're telling me I can connect to my Mac from a Unix or DOS system, over
a TCP/IP network, and run applications, modify my files, and so on. I'm
very rarely at the console of my computer; I'm all over campus, and I want
to be able to sit down at some arbitrary computer and get to my files.
>> >What about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
>> >displaying your Mac screen on another computer?
>
>What about it? It works. Yawn.
On a Unix X windows system?
>> >How about receiving mail on
>> >your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
>> >incoming mail arrives)?
>
>Eudora? Mailstrom? POPmail? LeeMail? This is probably about half of them.
That receive mail locally, and that I can run mail servers off of?
>If you have more time than money, then I can see why Linux might look
>attractive.
I'm a college student at Stanford. Of course I have more time than money.
8-)
>Well, the games are actually quite good, or at least a half-dozen of them
>are. I think, though, that what he was talking about as applications is a
>little different from what you and I consider apps. This guy sounds like a
>net access freak (hey, I'm one, too, so "freak" is no insult coming from
>me), so he wants software that enables his net access. Too bad he's simply
>unaware that Macintosh provides him with many if not all of the same
>options in a much nicer package.
You might not want to make too many assumptions like that. I'm not a Mac
expert, but I am reasonably familiar with them (for those who don't know
Stanford, the campus is 95% Macs). I use them on a daily basis, and I've
used most of the programs you're talking about. None of them do what I want
them to do easily (pipe e-mail through filters for example). All of them
require large amounts of mouse movement to do what I can do in other
applications with a few keystrokes; they are, therefore, slower for me.
The Mac is very nice for some people, not so nice for others. It isn't the
cure-all and end-all of operating systems.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
Variables won't, constants aren't. [Osborn's Law]
Mark D. Roth
>In article <39o428$t...@agate.berkeley.edu> justin@physics20 (Justin R. Bendich) writes:
<SNIP!>
> > Now, WHY is the find command
> > so goddamn cumbersome? I doubt that i've seen a single example that didn't
> > use the -name and -print options, so why does find make me type them?
> find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
>No -name and -print. (And /dev/null is present so that grep will print
>filenames. A bit of a wart, it ought to be an option for grep to print
>or not print filenames. There are also instances that I do
> grep foo * | sed -e 's/^[^:]*://'
>to remove the filenames.) But, yes, find is cumbersome; but try dd one
>of these days.
If I recall correctly, there's a note in the BUGS section of the BSD
find(1) manpage that says, "The syntax is painful." :)
--
ro...@uiuc.edu | Mark D. Roth | http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~mr4342/
(GEEK CODE 2.1) GCS d-- H+ s++:- g+ p1>4+ !au a-- w++@ v-(*)
C++>$ UL+>++++ P--- L++>+++ 3 E(-) N++ K++ W--- M-- V-
po Y+ t++@ 5+ !j R-- G tv b+ D+ B--- e+(*) u+@ h>++ f+ r@ n+@ y?
Pete Gontier
originate in comp.sys.mac.advocacy, but we old-time fans of a.r.c take
what we can get these days.
Russ Allbery
>r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Russ Allbery) writes:
>
>>Disclaimer: I do not agree with the subject line. But they aren't
>>cure-alls either.
>
>>mounts (not through AppleShare)? Can you access your Mac remotely? What
>>about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
>>displaying your Mac screen on another computer? How about receiving mail on
>>your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
>>incoming mail arrives)?
>
>You can use ARA (Apple Remote Access) to access the Mac and the programs
>remotely.
Only from another Mac. Not easily from a Unix system or a PC.
> Eudora is an excellent mail-reader that does all you said.
It receives mail on your Mac? (ie, telnet name.of.mac 25 and I can talk to
some equivalent of sendmail?)
>>How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading? What if I want to
>>save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
>>dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
>>line script like I can under Linux?
>
>I'm not sure but I think there is a newsreader for the Mac that supports
>threads. Using Applescript the above script should be simple.
With gzip compression (the rest of the world doesn't speak StuffIt) and with
true anonymous ftp (not AppleShare -- people in New Hampshire can't get to
my AppleShare)?
>>And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
>>application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
>>*no* money *whatsoever*?
>
>You mean you can get freeware spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, DTP
>apps, etc. for Linux? Sure you can get all of your apps free as long as you
>can settle for non-commercial quality software. How are those Unix
>games, btw?
Well, that's my point. The games are far better than the Mac games for me,
because the games I enjoy are text adventure games. Linux also runs Doom.
Yes, I can get spreadsheets. As I said, I use Macs for word processing in
general; that's easier for papers. For something long and technical, I'd
use LaTeX anyway. And, in the department of networking and e-mail software
which is what I do most of the time, the free stuff for Unix is superior to
*any* commerical software for the Mac available for *any* price.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. [Albert Einstein]
Pete Gontier
kath...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Karl Thomas) wrote:
> r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Russ Allbery) writes:
>
> >What are the anonymous ftp servers like for a Mac?
Just fine. They even have fairly standard names. The one in widest use is
called FTPd.
> >How about true AFS mounts (not through AppleShare)?
How about them? They're pretty nice, eh? Talk to the people at UMich for
more details.
> >Can you access your Mac remotely?
In what capacity? Over the network? Sure. Do the rest of the remote access
layers run over the network? Sure.
> >What about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
> >displaying your Mac screen on another computer?
What about it? It works. Yawn.
> >How about receiving mail on
> >your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
> >incoming mail arrives)?
Eudora? Mailstrom? POPmail? LeeMail? This is probably about half of them.
> >How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading?
Depends on your definition of true threading, I guess. The one I use does
subject line threading. There are a half dozen other freely available
readers. One of them may do reference threading, if that's what you're
talking about.
> >What if I want to
> >save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
> >dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
> >line script like I can under Linux?
Why bother with a script? What a hassle. Just have DropStuff sit in the
background and compress anything that appears in a folder served by FTPd,
and drag and drop the article from NewsWatcher to that folder.
> Using Applescript the above script should be simple.
Oh, that. Yuck. I hate scripts when there's no need.
> >And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
> >application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
> >*no* money *whatsoever*?
If you have more time than money, then I can see why Linux might look
attractive.
> You mean you can get freeware spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, DTP
> apps, etc. for Linux? Sure you can get all of your apps free as long as you
> can settle for non-commercial quality software. How are those Unix
> games, btw?
Well, the games are actually quite good, or at least a half-dozen of them
are. I think, though, that what he was talking about as applications is a
little different from what you and I consider apps. This guy sounds like a
net access freak (hey, I'm one, too, so "freak" is no insult coming from
me), so he wants software that enables his net access. Too bad he's simply
unaware that Macintosh provides him with many if not all of the same
options in a much nicer package.
--
Alexander John Batyi
=Please tell me this is a troll, please, please...
Maybe.
=In article <1994Nov7.1...@rescon.wells.com>,
=Alexander John Batyi <b...@rescon.wells.com> wrote:
=>In article <39k4ed$3...@Radon.Stanford.EDU> r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Russ Allbery) writes:
=>>Robert Watkins <b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au> writes:
=>>>Russ Allbery (r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
=>>>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
=>>I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
=>>programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
=>>command in DOS and Unix?
=>I have all three and I can't even find the Command Line Interface on
=>my Mac IIci! You all can keep your meeses and such. I find it much
=>more valuable to be able to type in multi-line commands with pipes and
=>loops to accomplish complex tasks on the fly. If I find the task
=>is repetetive, it is MUCH easier to enter the multi-liner into a text
=>editor, chmod +x the file and stick it in a bin dir in my PATH. Then
=>I can tap a few keys and viola! Faster than you can grab your
=>mouse...
=How is this different from using Applescript? Gee: enter a
=multi-liner in an editor and execute it. Must be missing something
=here. (Yes, I use Unix a lot- I do like the command line.)
What is Apple script? I DID say I couldn't find the CLI, right?
No mention of anything called *script in any of MY manuals.
=>To even get a program in my HandsOff menu is a tougher job. That is
=>if I could learn how to put something into program form on the Mac!
=>What do you need? So far by asking around I have found out you need
=>something called a toolbox or some shit. I think that that even costs
=>extra! Geez, love my mac huh?
=Do you even have the tiniest piece of a clue? Obviously not. The
That is my point! Thousands of dollars don't even buy you a clue!
=toolbox is the set of routines in the Mac ROMs which can be accessed
=via most programming languages. Applescript comes with 7.5.
Ok, that makes sense. I have 7.1 or 2 or something. I read every
book that came with every piece of software including the OS and
didn't see anything that would let me type in a command or any
reference to any command languages. This was about a year ago and
I have been using Unix w/ C for ... wow I don't even know! Over a
decade. I type (from a prompt :-) man clue and have all the info
I need on clue and references to all related clues. The Mac has
a little thing up top called balloon help and when I click on it
it tells me about balloon help. No help at all.
=>If someone
=>out there wants to let me in on the secret and tell me how to actually
=>use this preprogrammed piece of crap please do. X-windows is easier to
=>program!
=
=Obviously, if you don't know what the Mac toolbox is, you've never
=programmed a Mac.
I guess I don't know the secrets? Like I spend many thousand dollars
and they don't tell you these secrets in the friggin manuals? Linux
is free and has more FAQs and HowTo documents than I have ever seen.
They are in easy to store binary and available from any terminal in my
home. :-)
=As a matter of fact, I do do application work on my Mac: I do most of
=my programming in Unix. The applications I use on the Mac are nicer
=than their Unix equivalents. What's wrong with using a machine to do
=work on?
Nothing! I like the applications on the Mac. The whole reason for
this machine's existance is applications. It is the center of a
digital recording studio.
I would just like a prompt. ... a list of commands. ... a command
language. Maybe I'm soft in the head but I can't see how they can
think they thought of every possible thing I'd like to do with this
data. I cannot at this time read a file into a homemade filter and save
the resultant output in another file. I did receive mail as a result
of my posting pointing me to Inside Mac CDROM tools and information.
So the problem isn't with the Mac as much as what comes as standard
equipment. Since this as you say is not the case with 7.5 I'll have
to start looking for info on how to do that. Where do they keep the
clues?
=>If only they had ProTools and Midi Timepiece II for Unix...
=>Oh, and why do all the manuals keep warning me to save things
=>often? The Mac locks up alot, that's why! My Linux box
=>(and every Unix I have ever run) needs a reason to lock up.
=>This thing doesn't according to my manuals. They just lose
=>it every once and a while. DUH! Don't tell me Ye Old Init
=>Conflict either.
=
=No, the Mac lacks protected memory. This is (IMHO) the Mac's single
=biggest flaw. Unix is quite a bit more stable because of it, but
=nowhere near crashproof. Ever had NFS server problems?
Is there a proven way of preventing memory conflicts? Does it
only affect applications that grow their memory usage like an
editor?
=> WOW and imagine if they
=>picked Motorola instead of Intel! Cheap 680x0 hardware and expensive
=>*86 parts?
=
=No, wouldn't have happened. The 68000 was available in 1979, but the
=glue chips weren't.
I thought the glue chips were there but expensive.
Oh well. Great conversation and I am learning alot about the
ways to actually shape the usability of this Macbox. After being
used to versatility, this ease of use thing is VERY confining.
Woody Weaver
: >You can use ARA (Apple Remote Access) to access the Mac and the programs
: >remotely.
: Only from another Mac. Not easily from a Unix system or a PC.
So find another mac? I traveled 500 miles to a conference at UCSD, and the
library had a fleet of macs available for use. More problematic are issues
of security and speed.
: > Eudora is an excellent mail-reader that does all you said.
: It receives mail on your Mac? (ie, telnet name.of.mac 25 and I can talk to
: some equivalent of sendmail?)
No, its a popd client. No reason that a sendmail couldn't exist; its just
simpler to have Eudora, since that doesn't assume the mac will be on 24
hours.
: >I'm not sure but I think there is a newsreader for the Mac that supports
: >threads. Using Applescript the above [news article into ftp site] script
>should be simple.
: With gzip compression (the rest of the world doesn't speak StuffIt) and with
: true anonymous ftp (not AppleShare -- people in New Hampshire can't get to
: my AppleShare)?
Not all the world speaks gzip, either. But that is hardly the point. There
exist newsreaders for the mac, ftpd's for the mac, scripting servers for the
mac, etc. Anything really useful gets ported fairly rapidly. There are an
awful lot of macs around to sell software to, after all. The difference is
that the mac is intended to be a graphically based individually used
machine. DOS is intended to be a character based individually used
machine. Unix is intended to be a character based multiuser machine, and
Unix/X intended to be a graphic based multiuser machine.
One can argue issues of speed, but then the answer to that is to buy a
faster chip. One can argue issues of elegance, and those do have merit, but
as with any artistic measure, there is no accounting for taste. One can
argue issues of ease of use, but then that only applies to users who are
either slow or merely casual.
: >>And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
: >>application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
: >>*no* money *whatsoever*?
Ack! Many is the time I'd be happy to throw money at a problem rather than
pull hair trying to understand someone's sloppy distribution or code...
: >You mean you can get freeware spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, DTP
: >apps, etc. for Linux? Sure you can get all of your apps free as long as you
: >can settle for non-commercial quality software. How are those Unix
: >games, btw?
sc and xspread are fairly useful. I'd still rather have quattro pro, but to
be honest being able to access my spreadsheet and local data while traveling
makes sc a notch above qpro in my book. With WYSIWYG, what you see is all
you get, so that isn't terribly exciting -- what's wrong with a decent text
editor anyways? DTP? I do rather miss MacDraw, but XFig is rather
pleasant, and will export to LaTeX, so that is clearly a plus on its side.
And in LaTeX not only can I include images (everybody supports encapsulated
postscript nowadays) it means that I can take my desktop publishing and use
them whether I'm sitting at a dos box (like my laptop under desqview) or a
windows box (like my desktop pre linux) or a mac (like my officemate's
quadra, or that library fleet I mentioned -- such are the joys of OzTeX
locally and MacX remotely) or... and my book publisher will pay extra
because they can swap in their own style sheets and the text is ready for
camera-ready copy.
: Well, that's my point. The games are far better than the Mac games for me,
: because the games I enjoy are text adventure games. Linux also runs Doom.
My favorite game of all time has got to be (Peter Langston's) Empire. Text
based, multi-player -- just wouldn't run under something as
single-user-minded as a mac (or a dos box or even the darling amiga I'm
afraid). Ran on a Sequent under Dynix, last time I got a hold of it. Runs
on a rather wide range of architectures... if you are running a character
based multiuser system...
: Yes, I can get spreadsheets. As I said, I use Macs for word processing in
: general; that's easier for papers. For something long and technical, I'd
: use LaTeX anyway. And, in the department of networking and e-mail software
I think LaTeX is much easier for papers as well; not only can you use
standard templates for memos or articles, you can then index them
automagically.
: which is what I do most of the time, the free stuff for Unix is superior to
: *any* commerical software for the Mac available for *any* price.
Rather excessive hyperbole. Macs network, macs have email, and in fact I
have yet to find a good quicktime server, and it appears that there are a
lot of video out there in that format. Ah, if only I had a sun box, and
were running Solaris! (grin)
--woody
James Derr
>Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :)
Just thought you'd shout what? What was that you're shouting? Must be
just a lot of gibberish because I don't know what AM-I-GA means when
translated into the vocabulary of English speaking countries.
Is it a slang thing?
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James B. Derr de...@essex.hsc.colorado .edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Dickson
|I don't have a Mac handy right now; does FIND let you search for
|lines (or files) NOT containing a given string? How about regular
|expressions?
Surely you jest. Regular expressions, as I have been assured by many who
take the Mac more seriously than I do, "aren't intuitive". Therefore, the
standard Mac software (i.e. what you get with the machine) has no concept
of regular expressions. Hell, it doesn't even support wildcards for
filename matching. I guess that's not intuitive either.
--
Craig Dickson <c...@crl.com>
alt.usenet.kooks archives on the Web: ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/ro/cd/auk.html
To receive the a.u.k FAQ, send me email with Subject: send alt.usenet.kooks FAQ
Karl A. Krueger
Russ Allbery <r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>The Mac can't mount the remote server. Unless, of course, you're aware of
>an AFS client for a Mac; if you are, there are a lot of people who would
>love to know about it.
"AFS client"? Whazzat? You don't need an "AFS client" to do
file-sharing on a Mac. You need ... let's see ... networking extensions,
protocol extensions (EtherTalk/AppleTalk/TokenTalk/TCP-IP), and file
sharing extensions.
And you don't have to recompile your kernel to add them -- just drop them
in the System Folder and reboot.
>Admittedly, if we're talking about a Mac vs. DOS argument, this is rather
>irrelevant, since DOS can't do it either. Unix, however, can...Mac's
>have a real problem with connectivity compared to Unix systems. Linux now
>has an AFS client, at least in beta-test, so the Intel architecture can do
>it. It isn't precisely easy, but it's at least possible.
MSDOS does not have networking support. Well, if you put it on, say,
Novell NetWare it does quite nicely ...
>>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
>I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
>programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
>command in DOS and Unix?
There's grep for Mac. Why shouldn't there be? The question is, what is
a "text file"? Unlike UNIX, which is a "stream-oriented" OS, MacOS is an
"object-oriented" OS -- and NOT in the sense of C++. An object -- be
that a file on disk, a desktop printer, a resource, whatever -- has an
owner, a type, and certain other properties. There is a "Generic Text
File" format, but nobody uses it; people use SimpleText files because
they support more.
>Look, as I've said in other threads (I'm reading this from
>alt.folklore.computers, so they may not be threads on your newsgroup of
>choice), I consider the whole "which operating system is better" debate to
>be rather pointless, since so much of it depends on exactly what you're
>trying to do. I'm just trying to point out that the Mac isn't some kind of
>universal cure-all, or is necessarily the best interface in existance for
>all users. There are things that you can do on other platforms that are
>either impossible or extremely difficult on a Mac. For users, unlike me,
>who don't have to do those things, the Mac may be a great interface.
And for people who don't have time to fuggle around with system
administration, a Mac is great.
Comparisons:
UNIX is a sysadmin's dream. It's powerful to use, but takes forever to
master, and has infinite quirks and exceptions. ("The great thing about
standards is there are so many to choose from!") UNIX users are divided
up into two groups: the sysadmins, and everyone else. Very elitist, and
the OS encourages that, by being obscure. "Job security through snob
obscurity."
MSDOS is an idiot's cruft-up. It's weak and difficult to use. It is
neither easy on the average user, nor easy on the expert. There *are no
standards at all* because the OS itself is so meaningless -- "every
interesting MSDOS program is ill-behaved" because the OS's internal
routines are nonexistant or crappy. MSDOS systems -- PC clones -- are
invariably cruft-ups themselves, with nonstandard pieces and a sad lack
of compatibility.
MSDOS/Windows is an idiot's cruft-up that tries to be easy to use by
copying ideas from the Mac and other competent GUIs (like X, AmigaDOS,
MacOS, and the like). It still has the same asinine base system, and has
infinite workarounds to duck the noncompatibility of various PCs. (HOW
MANY video drivers do you have!?!)
Macintosh is pretty close to a perfect balance between experts and
newbies. It's easy to use for both. The "minimum knowledge" is next to
nothing -- point and click -- but the potential for expansion is
near-infinite. The easy integration of system pieces -- maintained
through adherence to solid, reliable standards -- provides the Mac's
sturdy-yet-expandable system. The reliable, well-written standard
routines (embodied in many "extensions", which are often UNIXlike shared
libraries in disguise) provide a solid ground for development. The
standard environment is expandable and upgradable even without systems
knowledge, through the widespread proliferation of third-party expansions
(such as the "WDef III" that gives me nicer windows, or the "StuffIt
SpaceSaver" that does background compression to save HD space). In short,
the Mac combines those features that make life easier for J. Random User
with those that make life more fun[ctional] for the expert.
--
--
-><- Karl A. Krueger -><- ka...@simons-rock.edu -><- 413/528-7675 -><-
-><- -> The opinions expressed in this message are mine alone <- -><-
-> Society, Macintosh, Internet Culture, Liberty, Insanity, Fnord! <-
Karl A. Krueger
>>Ever hear of Apple Script?
>Oh, yeah, and it's much less likely that you'll typo on a point-and-click
>keyboard, but either this is no longer point-n-click (killing your point),
>or it's pretty ugly.
AppleScript provides both written scripting and macro-recording. You can
tell it to record, make some mouse actions, then stop recording and go
back to check or edit the code it produced for you.
>Admittedly, you can learn arithmetic much more quickly than I learned
>calculus. Care to do physics using only standard issue arithmetic?
Irrelevant point. We're talking Apples and oranges; calling my Apple an
apricot does not change the facts. Both UNIX and the Mac are like
calculus -- but under UNIX you always differentiate by the definition of
the derivative.
>>How about a command-line emulation? Not that you need it, but it IS there.
>>Just what is it that you can do with the CLI that makes it so powerful,
>>anyway? Hell, I'd switch back to DOS for a good reason...
If you're really desperate for a CLI, get that C-Shell for Mac thing
that's been floating around -- even has a few standard UNIX utilities,
like grep and find ... :-)
>You can't under DOS; it's broken. What you can do:
>1. Specify behaviors*. I can say '-f' to mean do this *NOW*, dammit.
>I can say '-r' to mean 'and everything under it'. You can't easily
>specify behavior with a Mac. It's just given that it behaves the way
>it does.
Hmm? What do you think drawing a box around folders means, or holding
down Option while dragging? They specify behaviors. It's just that
under the Mac you're not working with streams; you're working with
objects.
A lot of your anti-Mac arguments are not well-founded, because they beg
the question "Would you *want* to do this on a Mac?" Part of the reason
you have UNIX's find program is because UNIX encourages messy
filesystems, with binaries all over the place. (Take a look at your PATH
variable!) Under a Mac, you let the OS handle the finding of files --
just keep a bunch of aliases (that's "links" to you) in your Launcher
Items folder. No mess.
>Those are the obvious ones. There's many more. And, once you've discovered
>how nice it is to be able to perform vast, sweeping things quickly, you'll
>love command line editing.
>
>Assume, on a mac, you have a fifteen-step sequence of points and clicks to
>move one file deeply nested to another file deeply nested. Let's assume
>you click wrong, and select '102694' instead of '101994' - five levels up.
>
>In a CLI environment, you edit your previous line, and you're done.
>In a point-and-click environment, you close N windows and open N other
>windows. Fun.
Yes, but -- yet again -- on a Mac you would never NEED to do that! You
*don't do obscure and disgusting things* like keep folders nested in
folders nested in folders, all with obscure names.
As I said above -- UNIX encourages obscurity. Macintosh encourages clarity.
(And, besides, if you can't tell two things apart by their filename, and
the program absolutely demands a particular filename -- change the icon,
silly!)
Steve Davis
> Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :) (The Amiga's CLI/GUI
> combo is even better than running a DOS window under OS/2 - you can
> launch the same programs with either method, etc. etc. - the two are
> completely integrated rather than one sitting on top of the other.)
> AMIGA! :)
As a long time owner of Amigas I must say that I'm dissapointed in its
CLI. It took perhaps ten minutes of experience with UNIX for me to go
scrambling for an Amiga ls clone. I discovered a number of valuable
utilities in the Lattice (and later SAS) C development environments.
However, I've grown too accustomed to the UNIX way to appreciate the
Amiga very much.
--
Steve Davis <st...@ksu.ksu.edu>
Kansas State University
Santeri Paavolainen
>Ta-daa! (In VMS, the shell does not expand globs; the program must do it
>so goddamn cumbersome? I doubt that i've seen a single example that didn't
>use the -name and -print options, so why does find make me type them?
csh% alias xf 'find . -name \!:* -print'
bash% xf () { find . -name "$@" -print }
zsh% xf () { find . -name "$@" -print }
and now you have a command named xf, which you can use as "xf <filename>".
Just remember to use quoting if your filename contains any shell
metacharacters.
--
sjpa...@cc.Helsinki.FI I have become death, destroyer of the worlds.
Jason F. McBrayer
Stuart Van Onselen <g91v...@cs.ru.ac.za> wrote:
>Mac's are tyrannical - programming them is diffficult (hard to get info and
>tools) and using them imaginatively is difficult (restrictive OS). Their
>architectures are inefficient, and they lack proper multitasking. At least
>they use Motorola CPU's! I must say, though, that all my info on Mac's is
>second hand - I couldn't afford one!
I personally think the Motorola vs Intel debate is pretty silly. If
your operating system is using the 386 (or higher) as a 386, and not as
a fast 8086, then the only real advantage for the 680x0 is prettier
assembler. The Intel family gets a bad rap because of DOS. The 680x0
family is a little nicer, but not enough for me to care.
>Alternatives on the home computer front?
>
>UNIX - Usually runs on PC's anyway, and, while VERY powerful, is also very
>complex, resource hungry and unfriendly (still prefer it over DOS, no
>question!)
Well, Linux isn't that resource hungry or unfriendly, as Unices go. It
is pretty complex, though. Not recommended for non-hackers, but if you
can deal with all the config scripts inherent in UNIX, it's pretty good.
I use OS/2 instead of Linux mostly because of the interface. They both
give you preemptive multitasking and memory protection on hardware that
would otherwise be wasted on WinDOS. OS/2's best feature is the
Workplace Shell, which is as easy to use as the Mac, but much more
flexible. I use Macs at work though, and the only thing I can't stand
about them is the lack of memory protection. The interface is weaker
than OS/2's, but not intolerable like WinDOS.
>AMIGA - GREAT machine, but underappreciated, poorly marketed, and run into
>the ground by incompetent marketers. Sigh!
We can expect the same to happen to OS/2, I'm afraid. Sigh!
>
>So you see, I am more than a little disillusioned by the whole scene. I am
>sure that a zillion happy PC and Mac owners will promptly try to make me see
>the error of my beliefs, but they'll have try REALLY hard.
I'm pretty happy with OS/2 3.0 on my (old and decrepit) PC. But you are
more or less right about the state of personal computing. It's not that
bad now, but given the state of available technology, it should be a lot
better.
Jason F. McBrayer
--
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Launchpad is an experimental internet BBS. The views of its users do not
necessarily represent those of UNC-Chapel Hill, OIT, or the SysOps.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Jason F. McBrayer
>Alistair James Robert Young <aj...@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>>things (run my wordprocessor on this document, delete this file, copy
>>this other file, format this floppy), and then when you need to do
>>a lot of assorted piping, redirection, et al ad naus., start up a command
>>line window and type away! Advantages of both, problems of neither...
>>
>>Well, *I* think it makes sense...
>
>combo is even better than running a DOS window under OS/2 - you can
>launch the same programs with either method, etc. etc. - the two are
>completely integrated rather than one sitting on top of the other.)
>AMIGA! :)
Gee, sounds like using an OS/2 window under OS/2. OS/2's CLI is
NOT DOS! You can run DOS windows under OS/2, also, but with
an OS/2 window you can run anything that you can run from the
workplace shell GUI.
Craig Dickson
|In article <39n54k$f...@sefl.satelnet.org> men...@sefl.satelnet.org
|(!Productions) writes:
|>Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :)
|
|Just thought you'd shout what? What was that you're shouting? Must be
|just a lot of gibberish because I don't know what AM-I-GA means when
|translated into the vocabulary of English speaking countries.
|
|Is it a slang thing?
Rumor has it that there is a computer called the Amiga, but I don't
believe it.
Dave Brown
>
> find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
>
>No -name and -print. (And /dev/null is present so that grep will print
>filenames.
But bloody slow with lots of files.
find . -type f -print | xargs grep foo /dev/null
The /dev/null is there just in case the last xargs only has a single file.
> A bit of a wart, it ought to be an option for grep to print
>or not print filenames. There are also instances that I do
> grep foo * | sed -e 's/^[^:]*://'
>to remove the filenames.)
Gads.
cat * | grep foo
And if you insist on doing grep foo *, try
grep foo * | cut -f2-99 -d:
Some people just work far too hard....
--Dave
Pete Gontier
st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu (Ray Cathcart) wrote:
> In article <39jjc2$3...@sefl.satelnet.org>, men...@sefl.satelnet.org
> (!Productions) wrote:
> > How about this?
> > cat $* | tr -sc A-Za-z '\012' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail
> > Can Finder do that? (If you don't know what it does, look it up! :)
> You know very well I have no clue what that means :-) Tell me, and maybe I
> can send back the equivelant Finder command...
There are two pieces to this puzzle. One is a command line shell which
supports piping. The other is the apps which filter the data as it comes
through the pipe. The apps are not much of an issue. Apps are apps, and
the ones listed here are especially portable. The only real issue, then,
is the piping. MPW can probably do this sort of transform, including the
apps, right out of the box. AppleScript will do it, with a little work
porting the apps to OSAXen and a little script jiggery-pokery.
But so what? The real point is that this is not something real users do on
a Mac. Occaisionally I need to do something like this, but I'm a
programmer, so I fire up BBEdit and do a bunch of regular expression
transformations. I haven't bothered driving BBEdit with AppleScript yet,
because I haven't needed it.
Does the fact that real users don't do this stuff make the Mac a lesser
machine? No. The Mac was not designed to do programmer tasks. It was
designed to do user tasks. If that makes it a lesser machine in someone's
eyes, I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
The other issue is this: on UNIX, "databases" are passed around as
free-form text files. Records are delimited by end-of-line, so you need
ten tons of support from little filter apps to do transforms on a
"database". On the Mac, any app that needs a little database just uses the
Resource Manager, and if apps need to exchange info, they shove
AppleEvents at each other or they use common resources.
Dave Brown
Karl A. Krueger <ka...@simons-rock.edu> wrote:
>...file-sharing on a Mac. You need ... let's see ... networking extensions,
>sharing extensions.
>
>And you don't have to recompile your kernel to add them -- just drop them
>in the System Folder and reboot.
Uh, hate to tell you this, but that's exactly the same thing, only
expressed in Mac terms.
--Dave Brown, annoyed by people who talk about "just rebooting"
Bruce Ediger
>I personally think the Motorola vs Intel debate is pretty silly. If
>your operating system is using the 386 (or higher) as a 386, and not as
>a fast 8086, then the only real advantage for the 680x0 is prettier
>assembler.
This statement is untrue. Even for allegedly "high level" programming (C++),
programmers of 80x86 boxes end up having to dick around with "far pointers",
declaring C or C++ functions as "cdecl" and worrying about what's in
the SS and DS registers. 80x86 is demonstrably evil, and it has visible
evil effects all up and down the spectrum of abstractions.
Stuart Van Onselen
: James Derr writes:
: |In article <39n54k$f...@sefl.satelnet.org> men...@sefl.satelnet.org
: |(!Productions) writes:
: |>Just thought I'd butt in here and shout AMIGA! :)
: |
: |Just thought you'd shout what? What was that you're shouting? Must be
: |just a lot of gibberish because I don't know what AM-I-GA means when
: |translated into the vocabulary of English speaking countries.
: |
: |Is it a slang thing?
: Rumor has it that there is a computer called the Amiga, but I don't
: believe it.
: --
: Craig Dickson <c...@crl.com>
Smiley when you say that, pardner!
The Amiga is a great computer. If only its old management had been remotely
competent, it may have made a significant dent into the Mac/PC dominated
home computer market. Here's hoping that the new lot have a clue!
Now excuse me if you've already been bored by my rantings on the subject of
PC's and Macs, but I suspect that my earlier posting on the subject got
lost during a "hiccup" by our news server here. So I'll try again :
My feeling is that the entire home computer market is up the creek. It is
completely dominated by the Mac and the PC, both of which, IMHO, "suck".
PC's are based on an antideluvian architecture, the 8080 (YES - the 8086 was
so similar to the 8080 that automatic code conversion could take place
between the two.) Thus even the Pentium is saddled with backward
compatibility with a 15/20 year old design. Come ON, Intel, you have to
throw off the extra baggage sooner or later!
Of course, this only scratches the surface of the PC's faults. But nothing
will be gained by me repeating what the Mac owners have already pointed out.
The ONLY thing going for the PC is low price and high availability of
software. And that software is often overpriced and buggy.
Macs are pricy, and over-restrictive. Programming them is apparently very
difficult, as it basically involves begging Apple for permission! They have
bottlenecks in their design that allow Amigas to Mac emulators faster than
the original Mac! In mitigation to these statements, I must add that, due
to the aformentioned price, I only have second-hand knowledge of Macs. I
hate PC's from first hand!
What are your alternatives for home computing? Rather limited, I'd say!
Unix? Usually runs on those ugly PC architectures. Limited software. It
is very powerful, but also very obscure. I'd still take it over DOS!
Amiga? Lots of promise, especially the new architectures. But these aren't
out yet, are they? And there's this little bankruptcy thing to get behind
them first, to boot.
Atari? Now THERE'S a name to start making sarcastic comments about! WHO?
So you see, I'm more than a little cynical about the whole market. I don't
know where I'll spend my money (if I ever get it, of course :-< ).
I'm sure that a million happy PC and Mac owners will try to show me the
error of my ways, but they'll have to try really hard.
(The above paragraph was not flamebait, but a plea for some interesting
thoughts on the subject.)
--
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Stuart van Onselen g91v...@cs.ru.ac.za Rhodes U, South Africa |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me! |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
| As my views are clearly superior to those of my institution, they |
| cannot be assumed to coincide in any way. |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
Pete Gontier
r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Russ Allbery) wrote:
> >> >Can you access your Mac remotely?
> >In what capacity? Over the network? Sure. Do the rest of the remote access
> >layers run over the network? Sure.
> So you're telling me I can connect to my Mac from a Unix or DOS system, over
> a TCP/IP network, and run applications, modify my files, and so on. I'm
> very rarely at the console of my computer; I'm all over campus, and I want
> to be able to sit down at some arbitrary computer and get to my files.
If you expect computers which conform to radically different paradigms to
interoperate completely, I can't help you. Exactly *why* you'd want to go
anywhere near a command line if there were a Mac on the desk in your
[office | dorm] is beyond me, but it's your perogative.
But, for the record, you do have some options. I believe you can access
your Mac from a Windows machine. Call Farallon and ask. You can certainly,
of course, control one Mac from another over the network. There is also
software to let you issue AppleScript commands via TCP. And I imagine
there is a way to shove MPW commands over TCP, although I have not seen
it.
But honestly, you're telling me that after using a Mac you would still
want to drive it with a command line? Ugh. I'd rather watch grass grow.
> >> >What about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
> >> >displaying your Mac screen on another computer?
> >What about it? It works. Yawn.
> On a Unix X windows system?
Maybe. Call Farallon. If worse came to worse you might be able to run MAE
(Macintosh Application Environment, an emulator) on the UNIX box and
shoe-horn the Mac version of the Farallon product into it. But X? Ugh. All
those pixels flying across the network? Bleah.
>>>>How about receiving mail on
>>>>your Mac so that you can have it on your own computer (and be notified when
>>> >incoming mail arrives)?
>>Eudora? Mailstrom? POPmail? LeeMail? This is probably about half of them.
>That receive mail locally, and that I can run mail servers off of?
Oh, a mail *server*. OK. There's a couple of those, too. I forget their
names. They're getting pretty good reviews. No mailing list software yet,
though.
Hint: ask about an NNTP server. There's no Mac program for that yet, either.
> (Macs don't) do what I want them to do easily (pipe e-mail through
> filters for example).
Ah, finally, a generalized complaint. This is the first one I've heard you
make; the rest of the time you've been complaining about the (perceived)
lack of specific applications, which doesn't go very far in my book. If
you need an app, write it -- or better yet, find the ones that already
exist. If you want to bash GUIs or the Mac in general, that's an entirely
different proposition.
The real problem in this particular case may be that you lack the apps to
do the filtering. I imagine if you had some nice drag and drop filters,
you wouldn't for a minute wish for command line filters. I'm not talking
about dragging an icon onto successive filter apps -- I've been around
long enough to hear the CLI-head complaints about that answer. I'm talking
about selecting some text, dragging it out of a window and onto a filter.
I do things like this all the time now that I am running System 7.5.
> All of them require large amounts of mouse movement to do what I can
> do in other applications with a few keystrokes; they are, therefore,
> slower ...
Ewww! Mouse! Eeek!
It's funny, but after having used a Mac, I resent how much a keyboard
slows me down. Tap tap tap tap tap tap. Or I get to memorize the
keystrokes, different in every app of course, which allow me to obviate
the tap tap tap tap tap tap. Most infuriating are the apps for which every
key does something -- even the unmodified keys. So if you hit something
accidentally, it may not be the case that you can just backspace over it
-- suddenly the document has been saved, closed, and the app quit.
Helloooooo, 'vi'! :-)
> ...for me.
You can always tack a "for me" onto anything you say, so it has no place
in a religious war.
> The Mac is very nice for some people, not so nice for others. It isn't the
> cure-all and end-all of operating systems.
I don't think anybody said it was. Nothing is. And keep your conciliatory
relativism to yourself -- this is a religious war.
Andrew Crawford
> In article <39lkuh$1j...@whale.st.usm.edu>, cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John
> William Chambless) wrote:
>
> > ...which brings us back to the topic:
> > GUIs are great for the limited subset of functions that they
> > present, but a lot of us have to do a lot of adhockery. A CLI offers
> > the use of a carefully-designed set of tools, which, along with
> > pipes and redirection, let me do whatever is needed with a minimum
> > of hassle. A GUI is faster when what you want to do is a menu choice,
> > but they don't cope well with the unusual.
>
> There are AT LEAST three grep-like utilities for the Mac.
Yes, but try piping them through 'cut'!
The point is that no GUI at the moment can offer the kind of power and
sophistication of a fairly elementary UNIX command line. Macs in particular
where, lets be honest, there's little attempt to get users doing "hard stuff"
suffer from a lack of small, reusable tools.
I personally can't think of any way of assembling something functionally
equivalent to the line
cat *.log | grep -v localhost | cut -f4,5,6 | tail -20
in a GUI, either real or imaginary, that wouldn't be more bother than it'd
be worth.
Me? I use my windowing system to give me lots of CLIs! :-)
Pete Gontier
bed...@teal.csn.org (Bruce Ediger) wrote:
You're missing the point. If the '386 is used as a '386 and not as a
faster 8088, then the memory model is flat. Of course, DOS/Windows still
expects to be able to run in a 16-bit environment at least some of the
time, so for right now the point is mostly moot. (OS/2 zealots please stay
away from my email box. I *am* aware of you. And you Linux, NeXT Step, and
GeoWorks people remember you're only a drop in the marketing bucket.)
Dik T. Winter
> In a previous article, d...@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) said:
> >
> > find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
> >
> >No -name and -print. (And /dev/null is present so that grep will print
> >or not print filenames. There are also instances that I do
>
> walk, to the nearest gnu ftp site.
Yup, and that does not suppress filenames. -h suppresses filenames, I am
never too old to learn. But how do you force filenames?
>
> That find you just mentioned would run about 50% faster if you were to do:
> find . -type f -print | xargs grep foo
>
But that does not do the same! I know it will be faster. But you had better
enter:
find . -type f -print | sed -e 's/[\\\'\''" ]/\\&/g' |
xargs -e grep foo /dev/null
and hope there are no funny filenames with embedded newlines, those lead
to error messages from grep or are not grepped. (There is a tab and a space
in the substitute patterns for sed.) Wow. %
When I execute grep directly from find I know that grep operates on exactly
the same filename as found by find, using xargs as you did I am not so sure.
--
% Sed is needed otherwise xargs would have difficulty with a filename like
Quiz/Telecom/"City" -> "Area-code"
which I have somewhere. Xargs will transform it to
Quiz/Telecom/City
->
and
Area-code
three separate arguments.
-e is good to have here for xargs, otherwise xargs will terminate on the
file ./^M_ , where ^M is a newline; skipping the remainder of the files.
/dev/null is needed because it is possible that the last call to grep
will have exactly one argument from xargs.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924098
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: d...@cwi.nl
Pete Gontier
se...@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach) wrote:
> 1. Specify behaviors*. I can say '-f' to mean do this *NOW*, dammit.
> I can say '-r' to mean 'and everything under it'. You can't easily
> specify behavior with a Mac. It's just given that it behaves the way
> it does.
You're talking about conventions honored by some apps but not all. UNIX
and command lines have nothing to do with -f and -r. There just happen to
be several UNIX apps which honor those command line switches. This is
analagous to F1 bringing up help in a DOS app -- or the immense amounts of
interface convention shared by Macintosh applications, only on the Mac,
the "behaviors" are merely a manifestation of system services. Where are
the UNIX system services which enable developers to more eaily implement
(and thus encourage) a standard response to -f? Funny how an example for
CLI "behaviors" is much better demonstrated on the Mac, eh?
> 2. Automate tasks. Come up with a sane *point and click only* way to
> move every file named *.foo to *.bar in a tree. Very very difficult.
> In unix, for instance:
> for i in `find . -name "*.foo" -print`
> do mv $i ${i%.foo}.bar
> done
>
> Neat, eh?
No, horrible.
In brain-damaged operating systems, the only way to differentiate files is
through file name extension conventions which are ridiculously vulnerable
to pilot error. Remember this morning, or was it last night, when your
compiler gave you a mysterious syntax error because it thought it was
compiling C when you intended it to compile C++, all because you forgot to
put a 'p' on the end of the file name? Or was it 'pp'? Or was it 'C'
instead 'c'? Or was it 'cxx'? or 'CXX'? or 'CPP'?
On the Mac, applications assign unique types and creators to their files
which are not readily accessible to users, so that when I "view by kind",
I can see all the C program source files in a folder separate from, say,
the picture files and the resource files.
Unfortunately, this system is compromised by the need to maintain
compatibility with conventions which originated on operating systems, like
UNIX, with brain-damaged file systems. So although I can view all the C
program source files in a folder grouped together, I can't sub-group the
.c files and the .h files. And why? Because compatibility with UNIX file
systems says I can't. If I need tools to deal with great masses of those
filenames, it's because UNIX file system compatibility says I need them.
And all of this on a system which would otherwise never need to ask me
such stupid questions.
Very frustrating. Thank you, UNIX. Now go home.
> 3. Filter. Not every application has to be able to sort. Not every
> every application needs to be able to count lines. Not every application
> needs to be able to match patterns.
Yes, monolithic applications are bad. On the Mac, there's no need, other
than marketing pressure, for monolithic applications. What's your point?
> ...once you've discovered
> how nice it is to be able to perform vast, sweeping things quickly, you'll
> love command line editing.
>
> Assume, on a mac, you have a fifteen-step sequence of points and clicks to
> move one file deeply nested to another file deeply nested. Let's assume
> you click wrong, and select '102694' instead of '101994' - five levels up.
>
> In a CLI environment, you edit your previous line, and you're done.
> In a point-and-click environment, you close N windows and open N other
> windows. Fun.
This explanation lacks a lot of context. I have no idea what you are
describing. You seem to be referring to command line history (more
remember-and-type stuff from the dark ages), but it's not clear what Mac
behavior you're talking about.
Joshua Juran
> In article <39k4ed$3...@Radon.Stanford.EDU>,
> Russ Allbery <r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> >The Mac can't mount the remote server. Unless, of course, you're aware of
> >an AFS client for a Mac; if you are, there are a lot of people who would
> >love to know about it.
>
> "AFS client"? Whazzat? You don't need an "AFS client" to do
> file-sharing on a Mac. You need ... let's see ... networking extensions,
> protocol extensions (EtherTalk/AppleTalk/TokenTalk/TCP-IP), and file
> sharing extensions.
Russ didn't say you need an AFS client to do file sharing, any more
than Unix needs AFP (AppleTalk Filing Protocol). There are many file
sharing protocols -- AFP, AFS, NFS, IPX -- AppleShare is not the common
denominator. The Mac can mount remote volumes exported via AFP, and if
the server happens to be AppleShare or another Mac w/ File Sharing
Extension or a Unix box with AppleTalk protocols, fine. If it's NFS, you
need 3rd-party software. If it's AFS, you can't do it, at least for now.
> And you don't have to recompile your kernel to add them -- just drop them
> in the System Folder and reboot.
True. And Macs reboot quite a lot, don't they? Protocols that aren't
shipped in the kernel must be compiled in *once*. And a large number of
items in your System Folder wouldn't enter the Unix kernel at all:
ccNotify, SuperClock -- anything which patches SystemTask et al could run
as a daemon, which could be started or stopped or restarted as needed. In
many cases, as an application, like Dark Side instead of After Dark. As
for Macintosh Easy Open, which finds alternate applications to open a
document, NeXTStep's Workspace Manager already handles this, and on a
command line you generally name the program you want to use anyway.
JPEGView JFIF Preview: I can install OmniImageFilters into the global or
my personal library and use them without rebooting. Without logging in
again, in fact. The common network stuff is already in the kernel. That
covers most of my System Folder. Of course, since everything on the Mac
runs in supervisor mode, it's like having one giant macrokernel.
> >Admittedly, if we're talking about a Mac vs. DOS argument, this is rather
> >irrelevant, since DOS can't do it either. Unix, however, can...Mac's
> >have a real problem with connectivity compared to Unix systems. Linux now
> >has an AFS client, at least in beta-test, so the Intel architecture can do
> >it. It isn't precisely easy, but it's at least possible.
>
> MSDOS does not have networking support. Well, if you put it on, say,
> Novell NetWare it does quite nicely ...
As a former NetWare administrator I beg to differ on the latter. The
former is quite true, though -- DOS was not intended to provide networking
support, and it lives up to that intention. The Mac was able to add it
without breaking the well-behaved applications; I'm not sure about
Microsoft's.
> >>Doesn't AppleScript have a grep-like ability?
> >I don't have any idea. Does that mean that I would have to do some
> >programming in order to do something on a Mac that I can do with a simple
> >command in DOS and Unix?
>
> There's grep for Mac. Why shouldn't there be? The question is, what is
> a "text file"? Unlike UNIX, which is a "stream-oriented" OS, MacOS is an
> "object-oriented" OS -- and NOT in the sense of C++. An object -- be
> that a file on disk, a desktop printer, a resource, whatever -- has an
> owner, a type, and certain other properties. There is a "Generic Text
> File" format, but nobody uses it; people use SimpleText files because
> they support more.
Okay, so if I want to 'grep "error" session.log' I find MacGrep,
double-click it, tell it to open Session Log, and type "error" into the
little box? That's how I might expect a Mac app to work, but grep isn't
an application -- it's a filter. Now what if I want to 'grep
"[^[]*f[oO0]*.bar[^]]" *.c *.h | sed "s/f[oO0]*/foo/g" | sort | tee
foobar.txt | mail the_guys'? Of course, this isn't something you'd want
to do often, but it might be the *kind* of thing you need to do
frequently. The command line syntax allows you to construct ad hoc
systems like this. A GUI requires that the tools be updated; add
checkboxes and radio buttons, etc. [] Sort () Ascending () Descending
... I'll take it on faith for sake of argument that the regular
expressions are parsed correctly, but you're still entering part of a
command line into that little box. Unless you have a graphical approach
to that too, which I think would be quite unwieldy and a nuisance to use,
even if it is intuitive. (Type "foo-bar", put cursor in front of "foo",
click Match One Of... button (icon appears in string), double-click the
icon, click Match None radio button (instead of Match One), enter the "[",
etc. ad nauseum.) I'd probably redesign this somewhat... no, I wouldn't
design it at all. There's just no use for it -- I believe that people can
write a regexp as complex as they can conceive. They just need to learn
the syntax first. Once that's done, typing it will be a lot faster than
the graphical approach I suggested.
> And for people who don't have time to fuggle around with system
> administration, a Mac is great.
The Mac is clearly the best platform for those who don't want to learn
about computers. But for the developer, the guy who puts toys in his
System Folder like a baby putting them in her mouth (like I used to :) ),
and the administrator of a network large enough to require an
administrator, I can't recommend it as the best solution.
> Comparisons:
>
> UNIX is a sysadmin's dream. It's powerful to use, but takes forever to
> master, and has infinite quirks and exceptions. ("The great thing about
> standards is there are so many to choose from!") UNIX users are divided
> up into two groups: the sysadmins, and everyone else. Very elitist, and
> the OS encourages that, by being obscure. "Job security through snob
> obscurity."
Oh, please. It's not JSTSO. It just ain't so! :) People like Unix
because of its power and versatility; unfortunately, these come with a
price: the complexity of the tasks it allows you to do involves a complex
command to tell it to do it.
> MSDOS is an idiot's cruft-up. It's weak and difficult to use. It is
> neither easy on the average user, nor easy on the expert. There *are no
> standards at all* because the OS itself is so meaningless -- "every
> interesting MSDOS program is ill-behaved" because the OS's internal
> routines are nonexistant or crappy. MSDOS systems -- PC clones -- are
> invariably cruft-ups themselves, with nonstandard pieces and a sad lack
> of compatibility.
I wish you would use more facts and fewer epithets when describing
important points.
> MSDOS/Windows is an idiot's cruft-up that tries to be easy to use by
> copying ideas from the Mac and other competent GUIs (like X, AmigaDOS,
> MacOS, and the like). It still has the same asinine base system, and has
> infinite workarounds to duck the noncompatibility of various PCs. (HOW
> MANY video drivers do you have!?!)
This good summary would be even better if you mentioned the thorogh
lack of integration between PROGMAN and WINFILE, and don't forget -- the
SECRET_C.ODE filenames that FAT provides.
> Macintosh is pretty close to a perfect balance between experts and
> newbies. It's easy to use for both. The "minimum knowledge" is next to
> nothing -- point and click -- but the potential for expansion is
> near-infinite. The easy integration of system pieces -- maintained
> through adherence to solid, reliable standards -- provides the Mac's
> sturdy-yet-expandable system. The reliable, well-written standard
> routines (embodied in many "extensions", which are often UNIXlike shared
> libraries in disguise) provide a solid ground for development. The
> standard environment is expandable and upgradable even without systems
> knowledge, through the widespread proliferation of third-party expansions
> (such as the "WDef III" that gives me nicer windows, or the "StuffIt
> SpaceSaver" that does background compression to save HD space). In short,
> the Mac combines those features that make life easier for J. Random User
> with those that make life more fun[ctional] for the expert.
I'm still concerned about the system's stability, though. Not just
INIT conflicts -- any misbehaving app will do the trick. Mosaic freezes
my machine sometimes (I think mainly when I click on the earth to abort
the transmission), mouse and all. Did somebody turn off interrupts, or
what? OmniWeb crashes too, but much less often, and it doesn't take
everybody else down with it, because it's running on a workstation. When
Apple produces a microkernel OS, the Mac too can be a workstation, not
just a personal computer.
Josh
--
Joshua Juran =) |
jju...@eos.hitc.com NeXTMail | When in doubt, um...
Hughes Applied Information Systems |
Pete Gontier
> We benchmarked it in college; the first document takes longer in nroff/tex/
> whatever you use/ than in MS WORD for the Mac. The seocnd takes much much
> less time. By about three documents, for simple work, the tex style
> is faster. It's faster long before the end of a reasonable-sized work,
> such as a 50+ page paper with figures, diagrams, and an index.
Which users merely accepted the document formatting conventions handed to
them by a standard roff/tex macro package and which ones controlled them
on their own? Do you have figures showing how long it would have taken the
Word users had they simply typed their papers into a style sheet without
ever modifying the formatting?
Which users were able to more easily adjust the margins and/or line
spacing to make their papers conform to teacher-imposed length
requirements? (I often got a half a page out of this kind of
jiggery-pokery, and it wasn't even dishonest, given that my margins and
line spacing ended up no larger than those on papers produced with
typewriters.)
Which users wrote their paper out long-hand first and merely came in to
the lab to type it out? Which users actually engaged their creative
process while working with the computer? How much did papers improve on
their way through the machine? Which users enjoyed the process more?
The bottom line is that the kind of pseudo-statistics you present here are
way too simplistic to be useful. In fact, we don't even have your
statistics -- we only have you interpretation of those statistics.
Bruce Ediger
[viable objections to claiming that a "runoff" style text formatter
is faster deleted.]
>The bottom line is that the kind of pseudo-statistics you present here are
>way too simplistic to be useful. In fact, we don't even have your
>statistics -- we only have you interpretation of those statistics.
I agree. Now, let's apply the same logic to the claims that a typical
WYSISOWYG editor/text processor is faster. Any statistics at all?
No? Then all you've got is a few anecdotes.
Pete Gontier
jju...@eos.hitc.com (Joshua Juran) wrote:
> Okay, so if I want to 'grep "error" session.log' I find MacGrep,
> double-click it, tell it to open Session Log, and type "error" into the
> little box? That's how I might expect a Mac app to work, but grep isn't
> an application -- it's a filter. Now what if I want to 'grep
> "[^[]*f[oO0]*.bar[^]]" *.c *.h | sed "s/f[oO0]*/foo/g" | sort | tee
> foobar.txt | mail the_guys'? Of course, this isn't something you'd want
> to do often, but it might be the *kind* of thing you need to do
> frequently. The command line syntax allows you to construct ad hoc
> systems like this.
No, it's not the command line that lets you do it. Look at Metaphor DIS --
its whole raison d'etre is to do filters with a GUI. The problem here is
that nobody running a Macintosh wants to do that kind of stuff. If they
did, it would exist. By 1994 standards, Metaphor DIS is not a technically
amazing system, but it does do filtering in a GUI. Give me a development
team and a Metaphor system (as a model) and I'll go away for a year and
build a clone for you. Warning: it won't sell; you'll be wasting your
money.
Pete Gontier
acra...@bagheera.gssec.bt.co.uk (Andrew Crawford) wrote:
> The point is that no GUI at the moment can offer the kind of power and
> sophistication of a fairly elementary UNIX command line.
Then you haven't seen Metaphor's environment.
Dave Brown
>For that matter, how many good word processors are shipping for Linux?
I believe Linux can run SCO binaries. So, quite a few.
>How about your sound support? Or multimedia? I can run Mosaic on my
>Mac; can you run Hypercard on your UNIX machine?
Who wants to, we have Mosaic. You can use our standard, it's more
commonplace anyways. It's also not proprietary. Proprietary
"standards" are stupid.
>I can use TCP/IP; can you use AppleTalk?
I don't care about proprietary networking protocols, either. "What's
your network address?" "Hold on a minute, I'll just make something
up." *vomit*
>How many MSDOG/Windork machines can parse both TrueType *and*
>PostScript fonts?
Get Adobe Type Manager for Windows, it has no problem with PostScript
fonts. And do your homework. Macs can't even do preemptive multi-
tasking[*].
>Expandability: my PowerBook Blackbird can be expanded to PowerPC; can
>your IBM PC-compatible be expanded to an RS/6000?
Probably expand quite nicely to a PowerPC. Or get an Alpha and run
Windows NT, OSF/1 or OpenVMS on it. (I also heard something about
Linux for Alphas, too....)
>Face it: MSDOS/Windows and the '86 architecture are obsolete; it's only
>a matter of time until they die out. UNIX is too obscure for real users;
>it's a sysadmin's system -- job security through snob obscurity.
*THAT'S* why it's so common. I see. I'm working in a building with
about 200 Unix workstations and one (1) Mac. Aha, the way of the
future....
[*] Unless you count A/UX, which I don't, or the forthcoming Linux release.
--Dave
Paul Tomblin
>
> find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
>
>No -name and -print. (And /dev/null is present so that grep will print
>filenames. A bit of a wart, it ought to be an option for grep to print
>or not print filenames. There are also instances that I do
Huh? Don't you have "grep -l" on your system? If not, you should run, not
walk, to the nearest gnu ftp site.
That find you just mentioned would run about 50% faster if you were to do:
find . -type f -print | xargs grep foo
Hmmm - that's a rather bald faced assertion. Lets test it:
time find . -type f -exec grep foo {} /dev/null \;
real 25.5
user 2.8
sys 5.8
time sh -c "find . -type f -print | xargs grep foo"
real 1.4
user 1.0
sys 0.3
Ok, lets check with a find that actually finds something:
time find . -type f -exec grep bfs_check_stop {} /dev/null \;
./vision/trace/bfs:assign bfs_check_stop $p4;
./vision/trace/process_feat:# bfs_check_stop = name of macro to
call to check stop points
./vision/trace/process_feat_trans:# bfs_check_stop = name of
macro to call to check stop points
./vision/trace/bfs.wout_subcir:assign bfs_check_stop $p4;
./vision/trace/process_feat.bk:# bfs_check_stop = name of
macro to call to check stop points
real 20.6
user 3.1
sys 5.2
time sh -c "find . -type f -print | xargs grep bfs_check_stop"
./vision/trace/bfs:assign bfs_check_stop $p4;
./vision/trace/process_feat:# bfs_check_stop = name of macro to
call to check stop points
./vision/trace/process_feat_trans:# bfs_check_stop = name of
macro to call to check stop points
./vision/trace/bfs.wout_subcir:assign bfs_check_stop $p4;
./vision/trace/process_feat.bk:# bfs_check_stop = name of
macro to call to check stop points
real 1.6
user 1.0
sys 0.4
So there you have it ladies and gentleman - my version of find is NOT 50%
faster - it's more like 1200% faster.
--
Paul Tomblin, Freenet News Administrator. Currently living in Akron, Ohio.
<a href=http://watt.oedison.com:8080/~tomblinp/>My home page</a>
Canter and Siegel are kibozing the net for their own names. Strike a blow
for net freedom and community and add them to your .signature
Jonathan Badger
>How about your sound support? Or multimedia? I can run Mosaic on my
>Mac; can you run Hypercard on your UNIX machine?
Yes. Two ways. There is MetaCard, a native X Windows application that is
a superset of Hypercard. Plus there are Mac emulators for many computers
including Executor which runs on PC's (both DOS and Linux -- different
versions, of course).
But in general Hypercard is pretty much dead, anyway. When was the
last time you saw a Hypercard book in a bookstore? It was hot stuff,
five years ago. Not now.
Stuart McDow
> In article <39o6c9$3...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
> kath...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Karl Thomas) wrote:
>
>
>>> How about true AFS mounts (not through AppleShare)?
^^^
> How about them? They're pretty nice, eh? Talk to the people at UMich for
> more details.
AFS? Really? AFS (as in Andrew File System) - not NFS. Really? True
AFS mounts on the Mac? Not NFS. With what software? Can I *please*
*please* get a copy? I need it. Thanks.
Or was that a troll?
--
Stuart McDow Applied Research Laboratories
smc...@arlut.utexas.edu The University of Texas at Austin
Nicolai E.M. Plum
st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu (Ray Cathcart) writes:
>In article <39haln$28...@whale.st.usm.edu>, cham...@whale.st.usm.edu (John
>William Chambless) wrote:
>
>> How about "find all the files with the word 'reorganization' in them"?
>
>Cmd-F, type "reorganization", hit enter.
>
>> >You guys draw a masochistic pleasure from memorizing umpteen
>> >different cryptic commands
Like, duh, Cmd-F? I don't find that very intuitive at all.
Nicolai
ka...@simons-rock.edu
> > And you don't have to recompile your kernel to add them -- just drop them
> > in the System Folder and reboot.
>
> True. And Macs reboot quite a lot, don't they? Protocols that aren't
> shipped in the kernel must be compiled in *once*. And a large number of
> items in your System Folder wouldn't enter the Unix kernel at all:
> ccNotify, SuperClock -- anything which patches SystemTask et al could run
> as a daemon, which could be started or stopped or restarted as needed. In
> many cases, as an application, like Dark Side instead of After Dark. As
> for Macintosh Easy Open, which finds alternate applications to open a
> document, NeXTStep's Workspace Manager already handles this, and on a
> command line you generally name the program you want to use anyway.
> JPEGView JFIF Preview: I can install OmniImageFilters into the global or
> my personal library and use them without rebooting. Without logging in
> again, in fact. The common network stuff is already in the kernel. That
> covers most of my System Folder. Of course, since everything on the Mac
> runs in supervisor mode, it's like having one giant macrokernel.
Problem: you're comparing apples and kumquats. You look for different
features in a Mac than in a UNIX box. Extensions are a different *design
philosophy* than kernel additions. Extensions also cover the UNIX idea
of "shared libraries" -- vis-a-vis QuickTime.
> Okay, so if I want to 'grep "error" session.log' I find MacGrep,
> double-click it, tell it to open Session Log, and type "error" into the
> little box? That's how I might expect a Mac app to work, but grep isn't
[lotsa grep tech deleted]
No, you'd open your patched version of Find File (we're on a fully-loaded
System 7.5 machine here, not a Classic), tell it to search by contents,
and type in what you want. It will not only give you the right things,
it will put them where you can see them -- then just select them and drag
to your drag-and-drop app. Want to take all your JPEGs into
GraphicConverter? Just Find File, search by name contains .jpg, select
the results (click, hold, scroll) and drag to your GraphicConverter alias.
I saw a port of cron to the Mac the other day -- and its sheer craziness
really illustrated the difference in design philosophy between the UNIX
system and the Mac. It expected you to generate not just a UNIXlike
crontab text file, but a weird extension to crontab -- even came with a
UNIX-style manpage! It was so silly-looking.
> The Mac is clearly the best platform for those who don't want to learn
> about computers. But for the developer, the guy who puts toys in his
> System Folder like a baby putting them in her mouth (like I used to :) ),
> and the administrator of a network large enough to require an
> administrator, I can't recommend it as the best solution.
I don't like your connotations of immaturity against Mac programmers.
("Developer" != "systems addict". "Developer" == "programmer", on a
system where developing isn't just writing pages of code.) Mac
development is different from UNIX development because you do a hell of a
lot of it outside your text-editor-and-compiler setup: you use ResEdit
to design your menus and dialog boxes, and the like.
> > UNIX is a sysadmin's dream. It's powerful to use, but takes forever to
> > master, and has infinite quirks and exceptions. ("The great thing about
> > standards is there are so many to choose from!") UNIX users are divided
> > up into two groups: the sysadmins, and everyone else. Very elitist, and
> > the OS encourages that, by being obscure. "Job security through snob
> > obscurity."
> Oh, please. It's not JSTSO. It just ain't so! :) People like Unix
> because of its power and versatility; unfortunately, these come with a
> price: the complexity of the tasks it allows you to do involves a complex
> command to tell it to do it.
... but only because the design philosophy necessitates complexity!
Under a Mac, there is not a *need* to issue complex commands. You don't
*need* to search through twisty little mazes of directories, all
different -- because you never *create* that kind of structure.
> > MSDOS is an idiot's cruft-up. It's weak and difficult to use. It is
> > neither easy on the average user, nor easy on the expert. There *are no
> > standards at all* because the OS itself is so meaningless -- "every
> > interesting MSDOS program is ill-behaved" because the OS's internal
> > routines are nonexistant or crappy. MSDOS systems -- PC clones -- are
> > invariably cruft-ups themselves, with nonstandard pieces and a sad lack
> > of compatibility.
> I wish you would use more facts and fewer epithets when describing
> important points.
idiot -> person who thinks MSDOS is a serious OS
cruft-up (of a program) -> poorly thought out and badly implemented
weak -> having few useful features
meaningless (of an OS) -> lacking useful standard functions, which
provide "meaning" to the OS (so that it is more than a program
loader for apps)
crappy (of an internal routine) -> that which nobody would use and thus
everybody writes their own code to replace
cruft-up (of a piece of hardware) -> thrown together out of off-the-shelf
parts, usually in a way that leads to incompatibility or
nonstandard hardware-software interfacing
> > MSDOS/Windows is an idiot's cruft-up that tries to be easy to use by
> > copying ideas from the Mac and other competent GUIs (like X, AmigaDOS,
> > MacOS, and the like). It still has the same asinine base system, and has
> > infinite workarounds to duck the noncompatibility of various PCs. (HOW
> > MANY video drivers do you have!?!)
> This good summary would be even better if you mentioned the thorogh
> lack of integration between PROGMAN and WINFILE, and don't forget -- the
> SECRET_C.ODE filenames that FAT provides.
I don't care about MS-Windows internal operations. It's ugly enough from
the outside; I don't care if its guts are uglier.
> > Macintosh is pretty close to a perfect balance between experts and
> > newbies. It's easy to use for both. The "minimum knowledge" is next to
> > nothing -- point and click -- but the potential for expansion is
> > near-infinite. The easy integration of system pieces -- maintained
> > through adherence to solid, reliable standards -- provides the Mac's
> > sturdy-yet-expandable system. The reliable, well-written standard
> > routines (embodied in many "extensions", which are often UNIXlike shared
> > libraries in disguise) provide a solid ground for development. The
> > standard environment is expandable and upgradable even without systems
> > knowledge, through the widespread proliferation of third-party expansions
> > (such as the "WDef III" that gives me nicer windows, or the "StuffIt
> > SpaceSaver" that does background compression to save HD space). In short,
> > the Mac combines those features that make life easier for J. Random User
> > with those that make life more fun[ctional] for the expert.
> I'm still concerned about the system's stability, though. Not just
> INIT conflicts -- any misbehaving app will do the trick. Mosaic freezes
> my machine sometimes (I think mainly when I click on the earth to abort
> the transmission), mouse and all. Did somebody turn off interrupts, or
> what?
How peculiar. Never had any problems around here with it. You *are*
running System 7.5, right?
--
-><- Karl A. Krueger -><- ka...@simons-rock.edu -><- 413/528-7675 -><-
-><- -> The opinions expressed in this message are mine alone <- -><-
-> Society, Macintosh, Internet Culture, Liberty, Insanity, Fnord! <-
Ray Cathcart
Allbery) wrote:
> Disclaimer: I do not agree with the subject line. But they aren't
> cure-alls either.
>
> Karl A. Krueger <ka...@simons-rock.edu> writes:
>
> [ Lots of things that the Mac is better at. ]
>
> I could argue with a couple of those, but let's take the opposite approach:
>
> What are the anonymous ftp servers like for a Mac?
Good selection, well organized, rather complete.
> Can you access your Mac remotely?
Yes. Either by ftp or Filesharing.
> What about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
> displaying your Mac screen on another computer?
Tinbuktu.
> How about receiving mail on your Mac so that you can have it on your own
> computer (and be notified when incoming mail arrives)?
That's how mine's set up...
> How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading? What if I want to
> save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
> dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
> line script like I can under Linux?
Good newsreaders, but I've never tried that other shit.
> And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
> application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
> *no* money *whatsoever*?
Comes with the computer, I believe. (System 7.5)
> (You will notice that I, like most people on this thread, are not trying to
> argue DOS/Windows. But you decided to pick on Linux too, so.... 8-) )
>
> Again, different operating systems for different tasks. You like the Mac
> for what you use your computer for; I prefer Linux for what I use my
> computer for.
Weird newsreader threading/compressing/archiving tasks. :-)
> >Face it: MSDOS/Windows and the '86 architecture are obsolete; it's only
> >a matter of time until they die out.
Agreed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ray Cathcart
Drexel University
st93...@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Eric Remy
Alexander John Batyi <b...@rescon.wells.com> wrote:
>In article <39mmk7$a...@nntp.Stanford.EDU> edr...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Eric Remy) writes:
>=Please tell me this is a troll, please, please...
>
>Maybe.
<<BOBBIT>>
>
>=How is this different from using Applescript? Gee: enter a
>=multi-liner in an editor and execute it. Must be missing something
>=here. (Yes, I use Unix a lot- I do like the command line.)
>
>What is Apple script? I DID say I couldn't find the CLI, right?
>No mention of anything called *script in any of MY manuals.
It's new in 7.5, although you can also order it from Apple. You can
also buy the MPW shell from Apple, or get it bundled with a compiler.
>
>That is my point! Thousands of dollars don't even buy you a clue!
Of course not. I don't get documentation on the BIOS in a clone when
I buy one either. The whole documentation set is available if you
want it in the Inside Macintosh series.
>
>=toolbox is the set of routines in the Mac ROMs which can be accessed
>=via most programming languages. Applescript comes with 7.5.
>
>Ok, that makes sense. I have 7.1 or 2 or something. I read every
>book that came with every piece of software including the OS and
>didn't see anything that would let me type in a command or any
>reference to any command languages.
The shipped documentation is designed for newusers: it has most of the
basics, but not advanced stuff. (Having gotten only 7.1.2, I
don't know if Applescript manuals come with new shipped machines. I
would hope so.)
This was about a year ago and
>I have been using Unix w/ C for ... wow I don't even know! Over a
>decade. I type (from a prompt :-) man clue and have all the info
>I need on clue and references to all related clues. The Mac has
>a little thing up top called balloon help and when I click on it
>it tells me about balloon help. No help at all.
Balloon help is useless- a good idea, but terribly implemented. Man
pages have the opposite problem: They give you so much information
that merely finding the switch that you want is almost impossible.
(See if you can get anyone new to Unix to find a file using the find
command. Not a chance they'll manage: reading man pages probably
won't help: it didn't for me.)
>
>=>If someone
>=>out there wants to let me in on the secret and tell me how to actually
>=>use this preprogrammed piece of crap please do. X-windows is easier to
>=>program!
>=
>=Obviously, if you don't know what the Mac toolbox is, you've never
>=programmed a Mac.
>
>I guess I don't know the secrets? Like I spend many thousand dollars
>and they don't tell you these secrets in the friggin manuals? Linux
>is free and has more FAQs and HowTo documents than I have ever seen.
>They are in easy to store binary and available from any terminal in my
>home. :-)
Yes, Linux comes with a lot, including a compiler. The vast majority
of Mac users don't have a compiler, and don't need one. Spending a
bit extra for the manuals if you do get one doesn't seem to be
excessive to me. FAQs for virtually every major Mac application are
avaliable on the net, available to any Mac with a modem.
>I would just like a prompt. ... a list of commands. ... a command
>language.
A list of major commands is in the menus. (An additional plus with
the Mac: the commands are almost always in the same place in the
menus.) I've always found using a menu based system easier at first,
since all of the basics are there. Command languages are available.
Maybe I'm soft in the head but I can't see how they can
>think they thought of every possible thing I'd like to do with this
>data. I cannot at this time read a file into a homemade filter and save
>the resultant output in another file. I did receive mail as a result
>of my posting pointing me to Inside Mac CDROM tools and information.
>So the problem isn't with the Mac as much as what comes as standard
>equipment. Since this as you say is not the case with 7.5 I'll have
>to start looking for info on how to do that. Where do they keep the
>clues?
Why should all of this come as standard equipment? Here on a.f.c, the
vast majority of us do at least some programming, and are comfortable
with the idea of manipulating data using lots of cryptic tools. 99%
of the PCs sold don't do any of this: they're used for applications
only. (Never mind that many of these apps are more cryptic than
the Unix utilities :^) Bundling all of the data on the inner workings
of the computer would just be waste paper or CDs. If people really
want to do more complex stuff, it's not hard to go find the
documentation. (Hell, bookstores in this area carry the full set.)
If you want to do programming, the Metroworks CD comes with C, C++,
Pascal, the MPW shell, C++ class libraries, ResEdit, and documentation
all included.
>=No, the Mac lacks protected memory. This is (IMHO) the Mac's single
>=biggest flaw. Unix is quite a bit more stable because of it, but
>=nowhere near crashproof. Ever had NFS server problems?
>
>Is there a proven way of preventing memory conflicts? Does it
>only affect applications that grow their memory usage like an
>editor?
Mac memory management is pretty boneheaded: you have to set finite
sized partitions for each application as it starts, so apps will run
out of memory if you try to do too much. (Opening a multi-meg file in
an editor, for example.) Why Apple doesn't license RamDoubler from
Connectix is beyond me. (RD gives variable sized memory partitions,
RAM compression, and more efficient VM.) No real way to prevent it,
although running the system with as few extensions as possible cuts
down on the problem.
>Oh well. Great conversation and I am learning alot about the
>ways to actually shape the usability of this Macbox. After being
>used to versatility, this ease of use thing is VERY confining.
Try actually programming a Mac to do anything interesting. Now that's
a challenge!
If I was somewhat harsh in my first criticisms, I apologize. People
here will tell you I complain about my Mac a lot. (No pre-emptive
multitasking or memory protection are my main complaints. The lack of
Unix based utilities isn't too bad: if I really need to do this kind
of manipulation, I move the data to a Unix box and do it there. Given
what I use the Mac for, this is very rare.) What I object to are
unfounded criticisms, which seem to be quite common. Over and over I
hear that Macs can't do something when in fact they can. They're far
more extensible than people give them credit for. It might take a bit
of digging to find out how to do it, but I doubt anyone picked up the
Unix shell commands instantly either.
--
Eric R. edr...@fermion.Stanford.EDU Department of Chemistry
"Any desired property can be calculated from the Schrodinger equation of the
system. The solution is left as an exercise for the reader." JIR, 3rd ed.
Robert Watkins
: Disclaimer: I do not agree with the subject line. But they aren't
: cure-alls either.
: Karl A. Krueger <ka...@simons-rock.edu> writes:
: [ Lots of things that the Mac is better at. ]
: I could argue with a couple of those, but let's take the opposite approach:
: What are the anonymous ftp servers like for a Mac?
Pretty good. Check out sumex-aim.stanford.edu (the InfoMac archives). Very
broad range of items.
: How about true AFS mounts (not through AppleShare)?
Probably not.
: Can you access your Mac remotely?
Yep.
: What about displaying applications from other systems on your screen, or
: displaying your Mac screen on another computer?
Xwindows good enough?? We've got an Xclient, MacX.
: How about receiving mail on your Mac so that you can have it on your
: own computer (and be notified when incoming mail arrives)?
Well, my Mac is my own computer, so if I receive mail there, it's on it.
But yes, you can set up forwarding, vacation-like things, biff, etc.
: How good is the newsreader?
Not newsreader (singular) but newsreaders, plural. There are several
versions.
I personally don't use a Mac for Internet access, but there's one package
(NewsWatcher?) that's really nice. Better than tin, or xrn which are the
newsreaders I use here at uni.
: Does it do true threading?
Not sure what you mean by this, but it does threading better than tin does.
: What if I want to save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers
: and compressing it, and dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory.
: Can I do that with a three line script like I can under Linux?
Well except for the compression, it doesn't even take a script. Most
newsreaders on Mac can do stripping automatically as a preference setting,
and saving to the anon ftp directory is no different to any other
directory. With AppleScript, you could get it to compress it.
: How about the software development environment?
Excellent quality here.
: What are the system libraries for networking like?
Well, you've got the Comms Toolbox that does most communication interfaces,
and it's very nice.
: Are there the equivalent of lex and yacc available?
lex and yacc are available.
: Can I compile the *huge* amount of available free software on the Net,
: like MUSH clients, nethack, etc., on my Mac?
If they are ANSI complaint, and you have an ANSI complaint version of any
libraries used. FWIW, compilers come with implementations of all standard
libraries, and my one (Symantec C++) also has support for various non-ANSI
UNIX libraries.
(nethack is most certainly compilable, but I prefer the Mac-specific
version: looks nicer)
: Can I easily write programs that accept incoming network connections
: and serve data, like I can on Linux with inetd?
But of course. Comms Toolbox again.
: And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
: application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
: *no* money *whatsoever*?
Not all of the system software. But then, UNIX isn't usually free either
(and, again FWIW, Linux, FreeBSD, etc are free, but explain the
proliferation and popularity of commercial UNI*es then.) Application
software: some is free, some is share, some is commercial. But the
_quality_ of the commercial stuff is higher than the free stuff you get via
UNIX. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
Bells and whistles? Usually shareware.
: (You will notice that I, like most people on this thread, are not trying to
: argue DOS/Windows. But you decided to pick on Linux too, so.... 8-) )
: Again, different operating systems for different tasks. You like the Mac
: for what you use your computer for; I prefer Linux for what I use my
: computer for.
Most sensible statement I've ever heard. And one I heartily agree with.
: >Face it: MSDOS/Windows and the '86 architecture are obsolete; it's only
: >a matter of time until they die out.
: The x86 architecture is not limited to DOS/Windows. I can't stand
: DOS/Windows, but my 386 serves me well; it handles multiple users and an
: anonymous ftp site, has been running for almost a month without a single
: problem, I can access it from anywhere I want, and all my favorite software
: runs on it. And yes, I use Macs for word processing (which is a very small
: part of what I do with computers).
680x0 isn't limited to DOS/Windows either. I don't use my Mac the way you
do, but I've known people who have. Oh, yeah, and all _my_ favorite
software runs on it (which is a lot more than I can say for UNIX). I use
Macs for word processing, but I also use UNIX systems for that (like when
my lecturers tell me to use LaTeX and I'm not at home to do it there, on
OzTeX)
: >UNIX is too obscure for real users;
: >it's a sysadmin's system -- job security through snob obscurity.
: Define "real". Unix is too obscure for casual users, for users who aren't
: heavily into networking and network applications, and for users who aren't
: comfortable maintaining their computer. Unix, however, does exactly what
: you tell it to, does it quickly and efficiently, handles networking without
: a seam, and is as stable as a rock (as long as you aren't using Solaris
: 8-)).
Well, Macs do what you tell them to do. Provided you don't stuff up the
code, they do it quickly and efficiently (and UNIX is just as vulnerable,
except that stuffups only affect the one program), it handles networking
without any problems (indeed, it was the first personal computer to be able
to be networked with absolutely no non-standard gear like ethernet cards),
and is stable as long as you don't use flaky shareware inits, or flaky
Microsoft products (every crash I've ever debugged has had one of the above
as the cause).
--
Robert Watkins b...@it.ntu.edu.au
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers
are around at 9 am, it's because they were up all night.
Thomas Koenig
article <Cz0FK...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>:
> find . -type f -print | xargs grep foo /dev/null
Unfortunately, this will break on filenames which contain newlines.
It would be better to use GNU find and xargs:
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep foo /dev/null
--
Thomas Koenig, Thomas...@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig...@dkauni2.bitnet.
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.
Thomas Koenig
article <pgontier-091...@avail.wc.novell.com>:
>Do you have figures showing how long it would have taken the
>Word users had they simply typed their papers into a style sheet without
>ever modifying the formatting?
That's the point... when you have immediate, and easy, access to
formatting, you tend to play around with it more. LaTeX does an
incomplete job at isolating the author of the text from the visual
details, unfortunately; the WYSIWIG programs don't even try.
Alexander John Batyi
>In article <1994Nov8.1...@rescon.wells.com>,
>Alexander John Batyi <b...@rescon.wells.com> wrote:
>>In article <39mmk7$a...@nntp.Stanford.EDU> edr...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Eric Remy) writes:
>Balloon help is useless- a good idea, but terribly implemented. Man
>pages have the opposite problem: They give you so much information
>that merely finding the switch that you want is almost impossible.
>(See if you can get anyone new to Unix to find a file using the find
>command. Not a chance they'll manage: reading man pages probably
>won't help: it didn't for me.)
They relax me. Of course people think I'm nuts so that doesn't
mean anything to the rest of the world. I learned Unix simply
by reading the manuals. A friend of mine allowed me to download
the full set of manual pages for his Tandy something Xenix machine.
I just started at the beginning and read to the end. Before I was
finished (got to f.) I was back online looking through his filesystem
with find(1). A couple of days later I was walking and talking *nix.
Then I bought an AT&T 6300plus and did the same with those manuals
and then a 3B2/300 and ditto. Now it goes the same with Linux and
even MORE manuals than I could have imagined.
I got stuck with the Mac since I needed ProTools, Performer, MTP,
Unisyn, Mosaic, etc.
>Yes, Linux comes with a lot, including a compiler. The vast majority
>of Mac users don't have a compiler, and don't need one. Spending a
But it means you can't program it. DOS <ugh> even comes with BASICA.
(Can't believe I said that.)
>If you want to do programming, the Metroworks CD comes with C, C++,
>Pascal, the MPW shell, C++ class libraries, ResEdit, and documentation
>all included.
Thanks! I am gathering all of the helpful info into an Elm Folder.
Sorry this had to start as a flame but I was just reading the stuff
crossposted to alt.folklore and had this macintosh frustration in
the back of my mind. I should have asked the net first.
>Mac memory management is pretty boneheaded: you have to set finite
>sized partitions for each application as it starts, so apps will run
>out of memory if you try to do too much. (Opening a multi-meg file in
>an editor, for example.) Why Apple doesn't license RamDoubler from
>Connectix is beyond me. (RD gives variable sized memory partitions,
>RAM compression, and more efficient VM.) No real way to prevent it,
>although running the system with as few extensions as possible cuts
>down on the problem.
Those are the little boxes that the application installations
cause to pop up across the bottom of my screen during bootup,
right? I know how to drag them out of the systems folder or
boot with a key pressed (forget which but no matter) to keep
them all disabled. The only critical application is ProTools
and it doesn't crash (as long as something like afterdark doesn't
try to use the processor while recording. :-) at all. It's
pretty well behaved with everything else lately also. Should I
take out some of the less used extensions?
>>Oh well. Great conversation and I am learning alot about the
>>ways to actually shape the usability of this Macbox. After being
>>used to versatility, this ease of use thing is VERY confining.
>
>Try actually programming a Mac to do anything interesting. Now that's
>a challenge!
Actually, that is what I am trying to learn how to do. What good is
a computer that you can't program. Years ago I talked my Father-in-law
into buying a computer instead of a video game so he could do more than
what the little carts let him do. So now it's little diskettes but...
>If I was somewhat harsh in my first criticisms, I apologize. People
>here will tell you I complain about my Mac a lot. (No pre-emptive
>multitasking or memory protection are my main complaints. The lack of
>Unix based utilities isn't too bad: if I really need to do this kind
>of manipulation, I move the data to a Unix box and do it there. Given
>what I use the Mac for, this is very rare.)
I am facing the same prospects unless I can teach the Mac to understand
a programming language. These audio files are kinda big to be feeding
to a gcc programmed filter through a serial line once in each direction.
>more extensible than people give them credit for. It might take a bit
>of digging to find out how to do it, but I doubt anyone picked up the
>Unix shell commands instantly either.
Instantly? No. Faster than the Mac? No, probably not. I enjoyed
learning the shell commands and other utilities more because each
multiplied the usefullness of the rest as opposed to simply adding
to it. The abiliy to combine the commands and execute them with a
few keystrokes and the ability to make shell menus makes using *nix
seem effortless. The built in power (my hard drive sometimes goes
nuts in the middle of the night batching/unbatching news and mail
or threading articles for trn. Why am I not typing this on the Mac?)
of the OS makes the applications a joy to program. Perhaps that is
why so much is free. :-) It's like the Mac has a wall you can't
go beyond without more bucks or a lot of work. But then again,
The Linux box does NOT run the sound studio. :-)
Michael Guzzo
>From: bed...@teal.csn.org (Bruce Ediger)
>Subject: Re: Macs Suck..
>Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 03:27:51 GMT
>ka...@simons-rock.edu wrote:
>>Command-F, select "date modified", select "is before", enter yesterday's
>>date, click "all at once", and click "OK". Command-D to make copies,
>>then drag them (all at once!) to the backup folder. Not hard.
>Maybe not, but it's sure as hell not very intuitive, either. Maybe
>even less intuitive than the "grep" command line posted earlier.
>In fact, isn't the explicit use of some many "keyboard shortcuts" a
>tacit admission of the inadequacy of the point-n-click way of doing things?
>Best regards,
>Bruce Ediger
Not intuitive? Good gawd, how non intuituve is using menus to construct a
regular language expression to describe what a user wants done? Command-D is a
standard Mac shortcut, Mac users *expect* it to be there.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Michael S. Guzzo
msg...@srqa01.jsc.nasa.gov
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I.
Karl A. Krueger
>>Command-F, select "date modified", select "is before", enter yesterday's
>>date, click "all at once", and click "OK". Command-D to make copies,
>>then drag them (all at once!) to the backup folder. Not hard.
>Maybe not, but it's sure as hell not very intuitive, either. Maybe
>even less intuitive than the "grep" command line posted earlier.
Not intuitive?! Nothing on a computer (short of full VR) is "intuitive"
to a non-expert. It's just a question of whose *preferences* you want to
cater to. UNIX caters to sysadmins' preferences for playing with
complexity, twaddling system source, and the like. Mac caters to users'
preferences for an easy-to-learn, yet powerful, system.
If you think that makes either the Mac or the UNIX interface more
"intuitive", you should hear some of the stupid-user stories
I've heard on *both* sides.
Besides -- doesn't it require experience to develop intuition about *any*
system -- computer or otherwise?
>In fact, isn't the explicit use of some many "keyboard shortcuts" a
>tacit admission of the inadequacy of the point-n-click way of doing things?
No, it illustrates *your* faulty assumption about the nature of
Macintosh's interface. It's not pure "point-and-click", any more than X
is. The keyboard shortcuts are an integrated part of the Mac system.
(Ever look at a menu resource? The shortcuts are defined *on the menu
item*, in the same place the point-and-click access to the same menu item
is.)
The "point-and-click way of doing things" IS inadequate by itself:
that's why the Mac isn't based solely on it, any more than X is. (How'd
you like to have an X button for every one of your emacs commands?!)
--
Richard Tokarczyk
: Karl Thomas <kath...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> writes:
: >
: >You can use ARA (Apple Remote Access) to access the Mac and the programs
: >remotely.
: Only from another Mac. Not easily from a Unix system or a PC.
With MacTCP you can do anything on a Mac remotely you can do on a UNIX
box... ARA just allows you to do it in a Mac-like environment (MacTCP is,
like TCP, essentially text-oriented)
: >>How good is the newsreader? Does it do true threading? What if I want to
: >>save a newsgroup post, stripping off the headers and compressing it, and
: >>dumping it into the anonymous ftp directory. Can I do that with a three
: >>line script like I can under Linux?
: >
: >I'm not sure but I think there is a newsreader for the Mac that supports
: >threads. Using Applescript the above script should be simple.
: With gzip compression (the rest of the world doesn't speak StuffIt) and with
: true anonymous ftp (not AppleShare -- people in New Hampshire can't get to
: my AppleShare)?
Dunno if the mac gzip port can handle AppleEvent driving, but Stuffit can
compress in uniz .Z format, if it can't handle gzip. True anon ftp is
possible, also. (Peter's FTPd?)
: >>And, to top it all off, can I get *all* of the system software, *all* of the
: >>application software, and *all* of the bells and whistles for absolutely
: >>*no* money *whatsoever*?
: >
: >You mean you can get freeware spreadsheets, WYSIWYG word processors, DTP
: >apps, etc. for Linux? Sure you can get all of your apps free as long as you
: >can settle for non-commercial quality software. How are those Unix
: >games, btw?
: Well, that's my point. The games are far better than the Mac games for me,
: because the games I enjoy are text adventure games. Linux also runs Doom.
: Yes, I can get spreadsheets. As I said, I use Macs for word processing in
: general; that's easier for papers. For something long and technical, I'd
: use LaTeX anyway. And, in the department of networking and e-mail software
: which is what I do most of the time, the free stuff for Unix is superior to
: *any* commerical software for the Mac available for *any* price.
Hmm... I use LaTeX for technical papers as well (just because the standard
format is what's required by the lecturers here), but I really hate not
being able to see what it looks like as I write... And I can never
proof-read LaTex. I have to type it up plain-text, check it there, then
translate. Ugh.
As for the networking, have you looked at it at the Mac side? I do a lot of
work in both, and I find the Mac stuff just as good as the UNIX stuff.
: --
: Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
: It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. [Albert Einstein]
Richard Tokarczyk
: In article <CyxIy...@csn.org> bed...@teal.csn.org (Bruce Ediger) writes:
: >From: bed...@teal.csn.org (Bruce Ediger)
: >Subject: Re: Macs Suck..
: >Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 03:27:51 GMT
: >ka...@simons-rock.edu wrote:
: >>Command-F, select "date modified", select "is before", enter yesterday's
: >>date, click "all at once", and click "OK". Command-D to make copies,
: >>then drag them (all at once!) to the backup folder. Not hard.
: >Maybe not, but it's sure as hell not very intuitive, either. Maybe
: >even less intuitive than the "grep" command line posted earlier.
: >In fact, isn't the explicit use of some many "keyboard shortcuts" a
: >tacit admission of the inadequacy of the point-n-click way of doing things?
: >Best regards,
: >Bruce Ediger
: Not intuitive? Good gawd, how non intuituve is using menus to construct a
: regular language expression to describe what a user wants done? Command-D
: is a standard Mac shortcut, Mac users *expect* it to be there.
Also, Command-F (Find) and Command-D (Duplicate) are available by the File
menu, which is probably how the user got to know those keyboard shortcuts,
anyway (the way the Mac does it, I find, is more obvious than the
underlining of the key character used in Windows and Motif... stands out
more). So I don't see why the keyboard shortcuts were a problem. I suspect
the original poster used them so he wouldn't get flamed by people
complaining about too much mousing.
(Anyway, the Find's dialog boxes is so much more intuitive than grep, and
regular expressions. Not as powerful, but easier.)
Eric Remy
Richard Tokarczyk <b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au> wrote:
>>Russ Allbery (r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
>: For something long and technical, I'd
>: use LaTeX anyway.
>
>Hmm... I use LaTeX for technical papers as well (just because the standard
>format is what's required by the lecturers here), but I really hate not
>being able to see what it looks like as I write... And I can never
>proof-read LaTex. I have to type it up plain-text, check it there, then
>translate. Ugh.
Sorry for the semi-commercial plug, but have you looked at Textures
for the Mac? It's a TeX interpreter- something I've never seen
elsewhere. Type TeX code into one window, output appears in the
other. It really makes the chore of typing TeX at lot easier- my boss
takes this to the extreme and actually does derivations totally within
the system. It's commercial and expensive, but if you do a lot of TeX
work it's worth the price.
Obdisclaimer: I have no affiliation with Blue Sky other than as a
satisifed customer.
>: Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
> Robert Watkins b...@it.ntu.edu.au
PAT
[chomp]
: ... Now, WHY is the find command so goddamn cumbersome? I doubt
: that i've seen a single example that didn't use the -name and
: -print options, so why does find make me type them?
Because you may not always want to find files by name, or just print them
out...
find / -user johndoe -exec rm -f {} \;
is a good example. It will locate all files that johndoe owns and
remove them. ( if the person executing it has such privs. ) You
are root aren't you?! ;->
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick S. Pflaum Information Network Of Kansas p...@ink.org
___
/~\/O O\/~\
------------------------------------------------------UUU--U--UUU----------
John Scudder
Russ Allbery <r...@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[...]
>The Mac can't mount the remote server. Unless, of course, you're aware of
>an AFS client for a Mac; if you are, there are a lot of people who would
>love to know about it.
I don't know of an AFS client for the Mac, but if you have a sufficient
need to serve AFS to your Macs, you can do what the IFS project at the
University of Michigan is doing. They run front-end (Unix) boxes which
speak AFS out one side and AppleShare out the other. I believe that
they use Netatalk for the AppleShare piece. You mount the AppleShare
volume on your Mac, and it just works.
Or at least it does for several thousand IFS users.
I think they export AFS to NFS-speaking boxes, too.
(I'm not associated with the IFS project, BTW.)
--John Scudder