Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Docs/Word Processing in Console ?

74 views
Skip to first unread message

Luis Denera

unread,
Jan 27, 2012, 11:33:35 PM1/27/12
to
Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?

I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
similar ?

It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.


none Rouben Rostamian

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 2:41:48 AM1/28/12
to
In article <jfvtqu$547$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,
Luis Denera <luisd...@invalid.net> wrote:
>Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
>years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>
>I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
>isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
>and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
>similar ?

Have a look at LibreOffice: http://www.libreoffice.org/

You may not need to download it -- it is already included in
many Linux distributions.

--
Rouben Rostamian

The Natural Philosopher

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 5:38:02 AM1/28/12
to
Luis Denera wrote:
> Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>

you mean a non gui ?

I think Emacs is the nearest.

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 7:07:53 AM1/28/12
to
LaTeX + emacs work just fine in console mode. No GUI, no WYSIWYG, but
you can certainly create *beautiful* documents. Requires some actual
learning to use these tools.

>
>
>

--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments



Kenny McCormack

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 7:17:03 AM1/28/12
to
In article <6YSdnQslfNiEeL7S...@posted.localnet>,
Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
...
>LaTeX + emacs work just fine in console mode. No GUI, no WYSIWYG, but
>you can certainly create *beautiful* documents. Requires some actual
>learning to use these tools.

Which pretty much makes it a non-starter in today's market.

--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as foolish,
and by the rulers as useful.

(Seneca the Younger, 65 AD)

Norbert Möndjen

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 7:01:10 AM1/28/12
to
Am 28.01.2012 11:38, schrieb The Natural Philosopher:
>> I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
>> isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
>> and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts,
>> financial and
>> similar ?
>> It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.
>>
>>

The last time I see something like this was on a VAX with s2020 for
spreadsheet/diagramm and AllinOne as mail, fax, wordprozessor, calendar
and so on. Don´t know if there ist still something like this is out in
the wild. This combination was working very well on terminals.

Ciao Nobbe

The Natural Philosopher

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 11:00:18 AM1/28/12
to
Sco unix used to have something of this sort as well.

Office on 80x25 glass screens..

Aragorn

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 1:13:56 PM1/28/12
to
On Saturday 28 January 2012 13:17, Kenny McCormack conveyed the
following to comp.os.linux.misc...

> In article <6YSdnQslfNiEeL7S...@posted.localnet>,
> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
> ...
>> LaTeX + emacs work just fine in console mode. No GUI, no WYSIWYG,
>> but you can certainly create *beautiful* documents. Requires some
>> actuallearning to use these tools.
>
> Which pretty much makes it a non-starter in today's market.

The OP doesn't appear to be looking for "a starter in today's market".
He appears to already be sufficiently experienced at using character
mode consoles and the DOS-equivalent software of what he's asking for
with regard to UNIX.

If the OP were a newbie, he'd go with Libre-/OpenOffice, Calligra, or
some other GUI-oriented suite.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

DenverD

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 4:48:26 PM1/28/12
to
On 01/28/2012 05:33 AM, Luis Denera wrote:
> is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1

this is probably not the answer you wish:

-if there is a command line 'office suite' which runs in DOS like the
old days i am not aware of it (have you checked sourceforge?)

-i _loved_ WP5.1 in DOS and always thought WP5 and 6 running in Windows
3.1 was a GIANT step backwards....that said, if you still have the
program disk it _might_ worthwhile to load up DOSEMU
<http://www.dosemu.org/> and see if you can get a working install

-if you have the program disk for (say) Lotus 1-2-3, you could do the
same (try it) and it was a very nice spread sheet

-there was a rudimentary database program, but i do not remember the
name...hmmm, was it dBase...ah, and Clipper

-as far as i recall no one had yet invented a "presentation program"

-OH! i remember there was a suite of programs named "Enable" had a word
processor, spreadsheet and some other stuff....maybe a
calendar/appointment book....contact list etc

no, i don't know where you could get any of the program disks or if they
would actually work in DOSEMU..

--
DenverD

JeffM

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 9:23:30 PM1/28/12
to
Luis Denera wrote:
>is there any office suite available for linux console
>as it was years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>
Neither of the items you named are suites. Right?
Both are word processors only. Right?
A terminal-based suite? None I know of.
The lightest (GUI) thing I know of is SIAG Office.

Until he hung up his keyboard recently,
this guy's blog was the Mecca where console fans interacted.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/

>I know [of] "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application,
>but just a spreadsheet isn't enough.
>
Of those of which I am aware, there are these:
http://google.com/search?q=site:kmandla.wordpress.com+WordGrinder
http://google.com/search?q=site:kmandla.wordpress.com+teapot+spreadsheet

>Or, are there any standalone office application,
>documents and word processing applications, faxing printing,
>piecharts, financial and similar ?
>
His database of CLI apps:
http://kmandla.wikispaces.com/

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 11:28:11 PM1/28/12
to
At Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:17:03 +0000 (UTC) gaz...@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) wrote:

>
> In article <6YSdnQslfNiEeL7S...@posted.localnet>,
> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
> ...
> >LaTeX + emacs work just fine in console mode. No GUI, no WYSIWYG, but
> >you can certainly create *beautiful* documents. Requires some actual
> >learning to use these tools.
>
> Which pretty much makes it a non-starter in today's market.

Which pretty much makes a non-GUI workstation a non-starter in today's
market. If the OP wants to create documents from a console screen he is
out of luck, unless he is willing to take on the LaTeX + emacs learning
curve.

Kenny McCormack

unread,
Jan 29, 2012, 12:03:58 AM1/29/12
to
In article <lcednXhR-YJGV7nS...@posted.localnet>,
Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
>At Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:17:03 +0000 (UTC) gaz...@shell.xmission.com
>(Kenny McCormack) wrote:
>
>>
>> In article <6YSdnQslfNiEeL7S...@posted.localnet>,
>> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> >LaTeX + emacs work just fine in console mode. No GUI, no WYSIWYG, but
>> >you can certainly create *beautiful* documents. Requires some actual
>> >learning to use these tools.
>>
>> Which pretty much makes it a non-starter in today's market.
>
>Which pretty much makes a non-GUI workstation a non-starter in today's
>market. If the OP wants to create documents from a console screen he is
>out of luck, unless he is willing to take on the LaTeX + emacs learning
>curve.

Yep. You got it, bucko!

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong. It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch [sic] revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

Mikolaj Machowski

unread,
Jan 29, 2012, 5:13:58 AM1/29/12
to
DenverD scripsit:
>
> -as far as i recall no one had yet invented a "presentation program"
>

Some kind of substitute could be docutils with S5 export.

http://docutils.sf.net

m.

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Jan 29, 2012, 7:06:37 AM1/29/12
to
On Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:28:11 -0500, Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com>
wrote:

> Which pretty much makes a non-GUI workstation a non-starter in today's
> market. If the OP wants to create documents from a console screen he is
> out of luck, unless he is willing to take on the LaTeX + emacs learning
> curve.

Definitely time to change that!

--
Aaron W. Hsu | arc...@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us
לֵ֤ב חֲכָמִים֙ בְּבֵ֣ית אֵ֔בֶל וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִילִ֖ים בְּבֵ֥ית שִׂמְחָֽה

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 29, 2012, 8:35:24 AM1/29/12
to
At Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:06:37 -0500 "Aaron W. Hsu" <arc...@sacrideo.us> wrote:

>
> T24gU2F0LCAyOCBKYW4gMjAxMiAyMzoyODoxMSAtMDUwMCwgUm9iZXJ0IEhlbGxl
> ciA8aGVsbGVyQGRlZXBzb2Z0LmNvbT4gIA0Kd3JvdGU6DQoNCj4gV2hpY2ggcHJl
> dHR5IG11Y2ggbWFrZXMgYSBub24tR1VJIHdvcmtzdGF0aW9uIGEgbm9uLXN0YXJ0
> ZXIgaW4gdG9kYXkncw0KPiBtYXJrZXQuICBJZiB0aGUgT1Agd2FudHMgdG8gY3Jl
> YXRlIGRvY3VtZW50cyBmcm9tIGEgY29uc29sZSBzY3JlZW4gaGUgaXMNCj4gb3V0
> IG9mIGx1Y2ssIHVubGVzcyBoZSBpcyB3aWxsaW5nIHRvIHRha2Ugb24gdGhlIExh
> VGVYICsgZW1hY3MgbGVhcm5pbmcNCj4gY3VydmUuDQoNCkRlZmluaXRlbHkgdGlt
> ZSB0byBjaGFuZ2UgdGhhdCENCg0KLS0gDQpBYXJvbiBXLiBIc3UgfCBhcmNmaWRl
> QHNhY3JpZGVvLnVzIHwgaHR0cDovL3d3dy5zYWNyaWRlby51cw0K15zWtdak15Eg
> 15fWsteb1rjXnta015nXndaZINeR1rzWsNeR1rXWo9eZ16og15DWtdaU15HWttec
> INeV1rDXnNa11qXXkSDXm9a81rDXoda015nXnNa01pbXmdedINeR1rzWsNeR1rXW
> pdeZ16og16nXgta0157WsNeX1rjWvdeU
>

Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?

Rui Maciel

unread,
Jan 28, 2012, 1:36:04 PM1/28/12
to
That really depends on what you actually want to do. Spreadsheets tend to
be abused by employing them in uses where they are less than adequate.

Regarding producing documents, nothing beats LaTeX. Still up to this day
and after decades of development, Microsoft Word and other word processing
software still lags behind good old LaTeX, with no sign of ever coming close
to it.


Rui Maciel

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 12:46:34 PM1/30/12
to
On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:35:24 -0500, Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com>
wrote:

> Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?

Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 1:32:03 PM1/30/12
to
Why? This is an *English* newsgroup.

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 2:02:44 PM1/30/12
to
Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> writes:
> "Aaron W. Hsu" <arc...@sacrideo.us> wrote:
>> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:

>>> Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?
>> Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.
> Why? This is an *English* newsgroup.

That doesn’t mean you have to stick to ASCII, nor that the contents of a
signature has to be in the English language (or indeed any language at
all).

A more pressing question is why he’s using base64 when 8bit or
quoted-printable would do just fine and be more widely readable.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 2:03:39 PM1/30/12
to
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:32:03 -0500, Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com>
wrote:

> Why? This is an *English* newsgroup.

For special characters in my signature as well as for other things that
may appear in English as well. I also work on other newsgroups that use
Unicode extensively.

Peter Köhlmann

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 2:31:37 PM1/30/12
to
Robert Heller wrote:

> At Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:46:34 -0500 "Aaron W. Hsu" <arc...@sacrideo.us>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:35:24 -0500, Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?
>>
>> Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.
>
> Why? This is an *English* newsgroup.
>
>>

And for all practical purposes english is the same if using ASCII or UTF-8

They have the exact same characters for all chars up to 7Fh


J G Miller

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:02:57 PM1/30/12
to
On Monday, January 30th, 2012, at 12:32:03h -0600, Robert Heller wrote:

> This is an *English* newsgroup.

I guess that means all the Irish, Scottish, Welsh etc
will not be allowed to post then.

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:22:23 PM1/30/12
to
Right. And the odd UTF-8 in the sig can be handled with
quoted-printable or something (and be ingored by people who can't/don't
deal with oriental languages). The rest of the posting would esentually
be in ASCII.

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:23:45 PM1/30/12
to
On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:02:44 -0500, Richard Kettlewell
<r...@greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> A more pressing question is why he’s using base64 when 8bit or
> quoted-printable would do just fine and be more widely readable.

My signature contains Hebrew/Yiddish, so normal 8-bit ASCII wouldn't work.
The other is a failure of my news client to encode things as
quoted-printable rather than as some other encoding.

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:31:13 PM1/30/12
to
English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
of the British Isles. *I* was just objecting to the use base64
encoding. It is *unfriendly*. I would have to add additional (and
really unnecesary) code to be newsreader. There isn't any really good
reason to use base64 encoding for *text*, unless you are making *heavy*
use of UTF-16 (eg the message is in Chinese using Chinese characters).
English (or really any language using the Roman alphabet) using either
ASCII (sufficent for English) or one of the 8-bit ASCII supersets either
needs no encoding or can use a lightweight encoding (quoted-printable,
etc.). Base64 is just plain overkill and is totally unreadably without
lots of extra processing.

Grant Edwards

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:48:44 PM1/30/12
to
On 2012-01-30, Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
> At Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:02:57 +0000 (UTC) J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Monday, January 30th, 2012, at 12:32:03h -0600, Robert Heller wrote:
>>
>> > This is an *English* newsgroup.
>>
>> I guess that means all the Irish, Scottish, Welsh etc
>> will not be allowed to post then.
>
> English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
> of the British Isles.

Well, here we go an another ride on _that_ merry-go-round...

--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I wonder if there's
at anything GOOD on tonight?
gmail.com

J G Miller

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 3:48:44 PM1/30/12
to
On Monday, January 30th, 2012, 14:31:13 at -0600, Robert Heller wrote:

> English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
> of the British Isles.

How about the term "Anglophone" then? ;)

noun
1. an English-speaking person, especially a native speaker of English.

adjective
2. of or pertaining to speakers of English.

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 5:39:31 PM1/30/12
to
I'm not proposing you use ASCII, I'm proposing you continue to use UTF-8
but with a transfer encoding of 8bit. i.e.:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Sam

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 7:10:45 PM1/30/12
to
Robert Heller writes:

> English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
> of the British Isles. *I* was just objecting to the use base64
> encoding. It is *unfriendly*. I would have to add additional (and
> really unnecesary) code to be newsreader.

In the year 2012, any non-prehistoric NNTP or mail client should not require
any additional coding, in order to understand base64.


The Natural Philosopher

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 8:05:12 PM1/30/12
to
great idea.

Aragorn

unread,
Jan 30, 2012, 9:25:06 PM1/30/12
to
On Monday 30 January 2012 19:32, Robert Heller conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...

> At Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:46:34 -0500 "Aaron W. Hsu"
> <arc...@sacrideo.us> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:35:24 -0500, Robert Heller
>> <hel...@deepsoft.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?
>>
>> Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.
>
> Why? This is an *English* newsgroup.

Such a narrow-minded vision. Another US American who thinks that there
are no other people on planet earth in possession of computer technology
other than those who live in the United States of America.

Just for the record, it is not an "English" newsgroup. It is an
international newsgroup, although English does appear to be the de facto
standard language here.

And as a last FIY, virtually _everyone_ is using unicode these days - at
the very least the UTF-8 variant - unless they're on Microsoft Windows.
There is /no/ valid reason anymore /not/ to be using unicode.

Rui Maciel

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 5:18:01 AM1/31/12
to
Robert Heller wrote:

> English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
> of the British Isles. I was just objecting to the use base64
> encoding. It is *unfriendly*.

Do you often take the time to rummage through post headers to find out if
unfriendly options were set?


> I would have to add additional (and
> really unnecesary) code to be newsreader.

Specifying which encoding scheme is used is not an unnecessary option. In
fact, your unreasonable complain demonstrates that it is in fact not only
reasonable but also required.


> There isn't any really good
> reason to use base64 encoding for *text*, unless you are making heavy
> use of UTF-16 (eg the message is in Chinese using Chinese characters).

UTF-8 is also Unicode, and the reason why it has been adopted globally to
replace ASCII or ISO 8859-1 is not due to "Chinese using Chinese
characters". You try to write anything in any language other than English
and you will quickly understand the shortcomings of ASCII/ISO 8859-1. In
fact, you don't even need to use languages other than English, as none of
those encodings support the euro sign.


> English (or really any language using the Roman alphabet) using either
> ASCII (sufficent for English) or one of the 8-bit ASCII supersets either
> needs no encoding or can use a lightweight encoding (quoted-printable,
> etc.). Base64 is just plain overkill and is totally unreadably without
> lots of extra processing.

Again, you are showing your ignorance. UTF-8 is Unicode, it a superset of
ASCII and you can use it to render any character you see fit. So, I don't
really see the point of your complains.


Rui Maciel

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 5:53:09 AM1/31/12
to
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> Robert Heller wrote:

>> English language, which includes Americans, Candians, Austrailians, all
>> of the British Isles. I was just objecting to the use base64
>> encoding. It is *unfriendly*.
>
> Do you often take the time to rummage through post headers to find out if
> unfriendly options were set?

I suspect he just saw a pile of hex.

> Again, you are showing your ignorance. UTF-8 is Unicode, it a
> superset of ASCII and you can use it to render any character you see
> fit. So, I don't really see the point of your complains.

He's not complaining about the use of Unicode, he's complaining about
the use of base64.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

SM

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 11:18:11 AM1/31/12
to
2012-01-28, Luis Denera wrote:
> Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?

I believe there isn't.

> I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
> isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
> and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
> similar ?

All I can think of is LaTeX. There's a learning curve but it's well
worth it. All kinds of documents, presentations (using Beamer package, for
example), even books can be produced with relatively little trouble. I'm
sure LaTeX-based spreadsheets are also possible but I haven't had a need
for those. Yet.

As a "front-end", use your favorite text editor. Hint: Vim.

> It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.

Sure but in any case, it is.

--
:wq

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 4:15:27 PM1/31/12
to
On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:53:09 -0500, Richard Kettlewell
<r...@greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> I suspect he just saw a pile of hex.

I believe you are right. The newsreaders which are a little old or have
not had reasonable patches will not unencode the encoded text, and thus,
some users will see nothing but a pile of hex. On the other hand, I know
of very few, if any newsreaders that have any active users that still have
this problem. I would be very interested to know what the newsreader is
that caused this problem.

Paul Bartlett

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 5:20:14 PM1/31/12
to
For reading some (not all) newsgroups, I use Alpine on a netBSD system
telnet'ed into from a terminal emulator. All I saw on the post under
discussion was a "bunch of hex." I did not at the time think to look at
the message headers. However, Alpine allows piping a message, so I
suppose that if I had an appropriate filter, I could have viewed the
message "plain."

--
Paul Bartlett

Robert Heller

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 6:27:37 PM1/31/12
to
It is my home-grown TkNewsII mail/news program that use the QWK protocol
to transport news and mail (with the use of uqwk) between by mail server
and my home machine (or laptop). (A reasonable current version of
TkNewsII is available for download from
ftp://ftp.deepsoft.com/pub/deepwoods/Other/) I never bothered to
implement base64 since I never visit binary newsgroups, which is where
base64 would be required.

Chick Tower

unread,
Jan 31, 2012, 10:09:35 PM1/31/12
to
On 2012-01-31, Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
> There is /no/ valid reason anymore /not/ to be using unicode.

I find unicode too pedestrian for my tastes. I use multicode.
--
Chick Tower

For e-mail: colm DOT sent DOT towerboy AT xoxy DOT net

Laurent Claessens

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:41:30 AM2/1/12
to
I got it with Thunderbird 3.1.16 on a Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. This is not
exactly "old" ;)

best
Laurent

Rui Maciel

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:20:43 AM2/1/12
to
Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> He's not complaining about the use of Unicode, he's complaining about
> the use of base64.

He has complained about the use of Unicode in this thread, and this post is
a reply following subsequent replies to that complaint.

A couple of replies down this thread, Robert Heller stated the following:

<quote>
> Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.

Why? This is an English newsgroup.
</quote>

Then, he proceeded to claim that "really any language using the roman
alphabet" "either needs no encoding or can use a lightweight encoding". On
another post in this thread, Robert Heller made the following claim:

<quote>
Right. And the odd UTF-8 in the sig can be handled with
quoted-printable or something (and be ignored by people who can't/don't
deal with oriental languages). The rest of the posting would essentially
be in ASCII.
</quote>

So, he isn't really complaining about the use of base64. He is complaining
about the use of any other encoding scheme beyond pure ASCII, and he is
basing his claims in premises which are silly and technically wrong.


Rui Maciel

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:49:32 AM2/1/12
to
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> <quote>
> Right. And the odd UTF-8 in the sig can be handled with
> quoted-printable or something (and be ignored by people who can't/don't
> deal with oriental languages). The rest of the posting would essentially
> be in ASCII.
> </quote>
>
> So, he isn't really complaining about the use of base64. He is complaining
> about the use of any other encoding scheme beyond pure ASCII, and he is
> basing his claims in premises which are silly and technically wrong.

In the very text you quote he suggested using QP. In the message you
replied to he made it completely unambiguous that he was complaining
about base64, not about use of Unicode in general. You're staring the
facts in the face and denying them.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
Message has been deleted

Rui Maciel

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 5:58:49 AM2/1/12
to
Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> In the very text you quote he suggested using QP. In the message you
> replied to he made it completely unambiguous that he was complaining
> about base64, not about use of Unicode in general. You're staring the
> facts in the face and denying them.

You claimed that "He's not complaining about the use of Unicode", which has
already been shown to be false. So, before you go on accusing others of
"staring the facts in the face and denying them", you should at least try to
make an effort not to make that mistake yourself.

And by the way, the only reason he suggested the use of quoted-printable
character is to «be ingored by people who can't/don't deal with oriental
languages». I don't know how anyone can agree with that nonsense.

In spite of these silly statements, and to avoid wasting time with this
nonsense, surely we can agree that base64 isn't suited for this stuff and
that nowadays there is no good reason to avoid Unicode.


Rui Maciel

Rui Maciel

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:14:48 AM2/1/12
to
Feranija wrote:

> I could read it in Thunderbird 3.1.17 without problems, even not
> noticing his encoding before someone questioned his post in base64.

I also could read it without no major problems, and I'm using KNode 4.7.3.
The only issue I've noticed was a couple of characters not being supported
by the font I use.


Rui Maciel

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 7:48:01 AM2/1/12
to
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:

>> In the very text you quote he suggested using QP. In the message you
>> replied to he made it completely unambiguous that he was complaining
>> about base64, not about use of Unicode in general. You're staring the
>> facts in the face and denying them.
>
> You claimed that "He's not complaining about the use of Unicode", which has
> already been shown to be false. So, before you go on accusing others of
> "staring the facts in the face and denying them", you should at least try to
> make an effort not to make that mistake yourself.

I prefer to trust his perfectly clear statement of what he's complaining
about over your theory.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

J G Miller

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:07:10 AM2/1/12
to
On Wednesday, February 1st, 2012, at 09:20:43h +0000, Rui Maciel proposed:

> So, he isn't really complaining about the use of base64.

Then why did he write

"Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?"

in response to a message with

Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64

Rui Maciel

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:59:17 AM2/1/12
to
Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> I prefer to trust his perfectly clear statement of what he's complaining
> about over your theory.

That's what you get by letting petty spite influence your judgement.


Rui Maciel

Rui Maciel

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 9:04:14 AM2/1/12
to
J G Miller wrote:

> Then why did he write
>
> "Huh? What is with the base64 encoding?"
>
> in response to a message with
>
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64
>

You mean, just before he posted the following quotes?

<quote>
>> Probably the Unicode. I have Unicode in my mails.

Why? This is an English newsgroup.
</quote>


<quote>
Right. And the odd UTF-8 in the sig can be handled with
quoted-printable or something (and be ingored by people who can't/don't
deal with oriental languages). The rest of the posting would esentually
be in ASCII.
</quote>


Rui Maciel

Laurent Claessens

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 9:11:46 AM2/1/12
to Feranija

>> I got it with Thunderbird 3.1.16 on a Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. This is not
>> exactly "old" ;)
>>
>> best
>> Laurent
>
>
> If you mean this message:
> https://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.misc/msg/ff4845a71a621c92
> [...]
> P.S. Ubuntu is the worst thing that could happen in world of linux.

I'd like to answer that Google is the worst thing that could happen in
the world of usenet ;)

Anyway, I'm not able to follow your link :p

Laurent

pH

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 12:18:41 PM2/1/12
to
On Jan 27, 8:33 pm, Luis Denera <luisden...@invalid.net> wrote:
> Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>
> I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
> isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
> and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
> similar ?
>
> It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.

Well, I always liked WordStar over Word Perfect.

You could use the 'jstar' variant of the 'Joe' text editing package,
ispell for your spelling checker and then efax to send your faxes.
You already have the spreadsheet.

Printing by good old 'ps' or whatever.

Maybe there are ncurses based programs for the charts others can
suggest.

Pureheart
Aptos, CA

danca

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 1:54:54 PM2/1/12
to
Il 28/01/2012 05:33, Luis Denera ha scritto:
> Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>
> I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
> isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
> and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
> similar ?
>
> It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.
>
>

You should probably try some old software under a DOS emulator. In
addition to WP-DOS and Multimate, I remember (and still should have
copies somewhere) of Framework II (it was a wonderful piece of software,
wp, db, spreadsheet and graph), the programs from Psion originally
created for the Sinclair QL (wp, spreadsheet, graph, db) and then ported
to DOS...and of course a lot of standalone apps.
Dan

Michael Black

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:17:38 PM2/1/12
to
Is Wordperfect for Linux so far in the past that it can't be used? For a
while at least, one could just install older libraries and get it going.
Of course, then there was a later version that used Wine or something,
that wasn't regarded well.

There was a time when Wordperfect for Linux was quite availalbe. There
was even a Dummies book about it, complete with Wordperfect on the CDROM,
though the clearance copy I got had a broken CDROM. There was also one of
those WOrdperfect for Linux Bible, complete with CDROM. If I remember
properly the author used to post in these newsgroups.

Michael

Michael Black

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:24:48 PM2/1/12
to
On Wed, 1 Feb 2012, pH wrote:

> On Jan 27, 8:33 pm, Luis Denera <luisden...@invalid.net> wrote:
>> Please, is there any office suite available for linux console as it was
>> years ago WP-DOS v1.0-5.1, or older MultiMate ?
>>
>> I know for "sc" or "slsc" spreadsheet application, but just a spreadsheet
>> isn't enough. Or, are there any standalone office application, documents
>> and word processing applications, faxing printing, piecharts, financial and
>> similar ?
>>
>> It does not necessarily need to be freeware nor opensource. Thank you.
>
> Well, I always liked WordStar over Word Perfect.
>
> You could use the 'jstar' variant of the 'Joe' text editing package,
> ispell for your spelling checker and then efax to send your faxes.
> You already have the spreadsheet.
>
I didn't think that was the real question, assumed he was asking about
Wordperfect because it allowed one to embed format tags that were
invisible the rest of the time, ie "what you see is what you get".

Joe is fine as a text editor, there's also Pico that came with Pine, and
an identical in function editor that comes with Alpine, though the name
escapes me at the moment.

But none of them allow hidden embedded format tags, and of course require
an external formatter, if one wants to get fancy with text formatting.

Michael

notbob

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:35:20 PM2/1/12
to
On 2012-02-01, Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:

> Joe is fine as a text editor, there's also Pico that came with Pine, and=20

Izzat what keeps dumping that annoying =20 at the end of almost every
line?

nb


--
Fight internet CENSORSHIP - Fight SOPA-PIPA
Contact your congressman and/or representative, now!
http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/
vi --the heart of evil!

The Natural Philosopher

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 3:58:53 PM2/1/12
to
I think it always WAS wine. I have it somewhere but never installed it.

Feranija

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:18:50 PM2/1/12
to
On 01/02/12 12:17, Michael Black wrote:

> Is Wordperfect for Linux so far in the past that it can't be used? For a
> while at least, one could just install older libraries and get it going.
> Of course, then there was a later version that used Wine or something,
> that wasn't regarded well.


Word Perfect CLI for linux console ? Oh boy, that will be the day!

Aragorn

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:21:00 PM2/1/12
to
On Wednesday 01 February 2012 21:58, The Natural Philosopher conveyed
the following to comp.os.linux.misc...

> Michael Black wrote:
>
>> Is Wordperfect for Linux so far in the past that it can't be used?
>> For a while at least, one could just install older libraries and get
>> it going. Of course, then there was a later version that used Wine or
>> something, that wasn't regarded well.
>>
>> There was a time when Wordperfect for Linux was quite availalbe.
>> There was even a Dummies book about it, complete with Wordperfect on
>> the CDROM, though the clearance copy I got had a broken CDROM. There
>> was also one of those WOrdperfect for Linux Bible, complete with
>> CDROM. If I remember properly the author used to post in these
>> newsgroups.
>>
> I think it always WAS wine. I have it somewhere but never installed
> it.

Nope. My first GNU/Linux distribution was Linux-Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack,
and it came with an X11 version of WordPerfect 8. Not wine, but an
actual UNIX variant.

Of course, WordPerfect had already long been acquired by Corel in those
days, and Corel in turn was bought by Microsoft, "because they were
interested in the code of Corel Draw". WP vanished shortly afterwards,
and the Corel Linux distribution - which was still quite new at the time
- was sold to Xandros.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 4:27:58 PM2/1/12
to
On Wednesday 01 February 2012 22:18, Feranija conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...
Having been involved in teaching and creating WordPerfect 5.0 and 5.1
courses myself - on PC-DOS 3.30 on IBM XT and PS/2 machines back in
1990/1991 - I would certainly welcome back the non-graphical WordPerfect
variants for use in character mode login consoles on GNU/Linux (and
Free-/Net-/OpenBSD, Solaris, et al).

As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, Corel did, after it had
acquired WordPerfect, release an X11-based version of WordPerfect 8 for
GNU/Linux, which was supplied on the CDs of my Mandrake 6.0 distribution
in 1999. Shortly thereafter, Corel also released its own GNU/Linux
distro, but Corel was bought up by Microsoft and subsequently,
WordPerfect was killed off - as it was too big a competitor for MS-Word
- and the GNU/Linux division was sold to Xandros.

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 5:24:27 PM2/1/12
to
On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:35:20 -0500, notbob <not...@nothome.com> wrote:

> Izzat what keeps dumping that annoying =20 at the end of almost every
> line?

That's your newsreader's failure to properly handle the formatting of the
message. Those are used as line enders in mail messages that use MIME with
quoted-printable.

notbob

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 6:17:47 PM2/1/12
to
On 2012-02-01, Aaron W. Hsu <arc...@sacrideo.us> wrote:

> That's your newsreader's failure to properly handle the formatting of the
> message. Those are used as line enders in mail messages that use MIME with
> quoted-printable.

No doubt due to the fact usenet is not a mail protocol and MIME is an
unacceptable format for newsgroups. My newsreader client has failed
nothing and works precisely as intended for nntp.

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:42:07 PM2/1/12
to
On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:17:47 -0500, notbob <not...@nothome.com> wrote:

> No doubt due to the fact usenet is not a mail protocol and MIME is an
> unacceptable format for newsgroups. My newsreader client has failed
> nothing and works precisely as intended for nntp.

This has nothing to do with MIME, the quoted printable encoding is not
restricted to MIME, IIRC. How would you suggest the transmission of data
that uses more than 7-bit characters? Usenet is not and should not be
ASCII only.

First someone complains about base64, and suggests quoted printable
instead, and now someone says that quoted printable is unacceptable, what
should we use instead?

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Feb 1, 2012, 8:42:52 PM2/1/12
to
I have actually suggested that our local hacking group hold a hackathon
for an RTF CLI editor. I think it would be quite interesting to see the
results that people come up with.

--
Aaron W. Hsu | arc...@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us
לֵ֤ב חֲכָמִים֙ בְּבֵ֣ית אֵ֔בֶל וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִילִ֖ים בְּבֵ֥ית שִׂמְחָֽה

Krzysztof Mitko

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 3:01:37 AM2/2/12
to
["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]
8-bit UTF-8 or ISO-8859-something, at least that's what some non-english
hierarchies require.

--
Z pozdrowieniami,
Krzysztof Mitko

Richard Kettlewell

unread,
Feb 2, 2012, 4:02:36 AM2/2/12
to
"Aaron W. Hsu" <arc...@sacrideo.us> writes:
> notbob <not...@nothome.com> wrote:

>> No doubt due to the fact usenet is not a mail protocol and MIME is an
>> unacceptable format for newsgroups. My newsreader client has failed
>> nothing and works precisely as intended for nntp.
>
> This has nothing to do with MIME, the quoted printable encoding is not
> restricted to MIME, IIRC.

QP is indeed part of MIME, although it’s wrong to say that MIME is not
suitable for news, since MIME headers are precisely how news articles
indicate their character and transfer encodings.

> How would you suggest the transmission of data that uses more than
> 7-bit characters? Usenet is not and should not be ASCII only.
>
> First someone complains about base64, and suggests quoted printable
> instead, and now someone says that quoted printable is unacceptable,
> what should we use instead?

You should use 8bit. As I think has been said several times now.

* The MIME readers will just work.
* The non-MIME readers that happen to be using the same charset will
just work too.
* The non-MIME readers that happen to be using some other charset
will have nonsense for non-ASCII characters but otherwise be fine.

base64 works for MIME readers but the non-MIME readers just see a pile
of impenetrable hex.

quoted-printable works for MIME readers but non-MIME readers tend to see
lots of extra =20 junk even for plain old ASCII characters.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Feranija

unread,
Feb 4, 2012, 4:20:12 PM2/4/12
to
On 01/02/12 09:18, pH wrote:

> Well, I always liked WordStar over Word Perfect.
>
> You could use the 'jstar' variant of the 'Joe' text editing package,


Maybe people will find this interesting; two contemporary writers,
George R. Martin and Robert J. Sawyer still use WordStar for their
novellas. Also, jstar mentioned again in readers' comments.

Sawyer:
http://www.sfwriter.com/2009/06/rjs-on-wordstar-cited-in-paper-about.html
Martin: http://grrm.livejournal.com/197075.html

Aaron W. Hsu

unread,
Feb 4, 2012, 7:03:15 PM2/4/12
to
Feranija <fera...@mouse-potato.com> writes:

>On 01/02/12 09:18, pH wrote:

>> Well, I always liked WordStar over Word Perfect.
>>
>> You could use the 'jstar' variant of the 'Joe' text editing package,

>Maybe people will find this interesting; two contemporary writers,
>George R. Martin and Robert J. Sawyer still use WordStar for their
>novellas. Also, jstar mentioned again in readers' comments.

I was just going around and I discovered this as well! I find it very
interesting. I was actually wondering whether there is a mode anywhere that
would allow one to print Wordstar documents composed in Joe (I think you
could actually put in the same codes that WordStar puts into documents using
Joe) in the same way? I would be quite interested to know if there were such
a thing!

Joe is a great editor, but I guess for some people, nothing beats an
original.
Programming is just another word for the lost art of thinking.
0 new messages