Linux vs. Windows 95: why we will probably lose
Steven Miale
attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
probably incite flames galore.
Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
I have experience with Joe User - I've taught them. They don't care about
having a programming language embedded in their word processor. They don't
care for CLIs. They like something that is easy for them to use and figure
out, without having to spend a few hours staring at the man page or reading
a manual.
Case in point: mount versus (say) AppleTalk's interface. Mount _can_ be
easy to use, but it requires some knowledge of networking to hook two
computers together. Appletalk? Any idiot can figure it out. Well, that's
the point. I shouldn't _have_ to think about it. I should be thinking about
my work, not about some matter which is secondary. So it's a bit slower. So
what? It is _my time_ that is important.
Case in point: WordPerfect for Windows/Mac versus WordPerfect for SCO. Yes,
the SCO port runs under Linux. OK - so? Why should I upgrade my OS and
pay $$$ to get a Unix port of software I already have? Long file names?
Already on the mac. (Long enough, anyway.) Already on OS/2 (not sure if
there is a WP port for that platform yet, but it is coming.)
Some work has already been done on improving the interfaces. That's nice.
But the attitude of the thread has been one of "who needs an interface;
just type double-bucky-bang. it's in the man pages."
This is not going to win over the average user.
(And lest you say I know nothing about Linux - yes, I use it, I program
under it, and I'm dying to write good apps and good interfaces to system
calls.)
Steve
--
Steven Miale <http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/smiale.html>
Russell McGinnis
: After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
: attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
: probably incite flames galore.
: Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Steve's right. (In fact, it's too bad that Gutzon Borhglum isn't around
to carve it on Mount Rushmore.) Linuxites take pride in using terms
like "end lusers;" To paraphrase Will Rogers, we're all "end-lusers"
just in different domains. What if you went to an auto garage and the
mechanic said, "Hey, man, if you can't grind your own camshaft then
you're not worth our time!" What if you climbed into a car and it
had manual spark and mixture controls? It is the people that Linuxites
snub who will ensure that future generations of Linuxites will be
railing against Bill Gates' grandchildren for controlling the computer
industry (or maybe the whole earth.)
Russ Mc
Mark Komarinski
: After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
: attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
: probably incite flames galore.
Probably. Let me be one of the first *grin* (no flamesing tho)
: Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
: Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
: and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
: useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
UNIX has *never* (well..except for Next) catered to Joe User. There are
too many configuration files, too much 'rolling your own', too much
to keep track of for someone who just wants to do word processing.
The prime candidates for Linux users are people who want the power
and configurability of UNIX, but also know they can handle all the
little bitty configuration files and setups. As an example, imagine
you got a new video card. Windows would be much easier to install the
drivers for, but Linux (X) would give you the configurability of
making wacky resolutions like 976X750.
: I have experience with Joe User - I've taught them. They don't care about
: having a programming language embedded in their word processor. They don't
: care for CLIs. They like something that is easy for them to use and figure
: out, without having to spend a few hours staring at the man page or reading
: a manual.
And that is why everyone is flocking to Windows.
: Case in point: mount versus (say) AppleTalk's interface. Mount _can_ be
: easy to use, but it requires some knowledge of networking to hook two
: computers together. Appletalk? Any idiot can figure it out. Well, that's
: the point. I shouldn't _have_ to think about it. I should be thinking about
: my work, not about some matter which is secondary. So it's a bit slower. So
: what? It is _my time_ that is important.
Then you're the kind of person who would rather edit system.ini instead
of /etc/rc.d/* and /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/.....
: Case in point: WordPerfect for Windows/Mac versus WordPerfect for SCO. Yes,
: the SCO port runs under Linux. OK - so? Why should I upgrade my OS and
: pay $$$ to get a Unix port of software I already have? Long file names?
: Already on the mac. (Long enough, anyway.) Already on OS/2 (not sure if
: there is a WP port for that platform yet, but it is coming.)
That was covered in a different thread (the high $$$)
: Some work has already been done on improving the interfaces. That's nice.
: But the attitude of the thread has been one of "who needs an interface;
: just type double-bucky-bang. it's in the man pages."
: This is not going to win over the average user.
I still say we're going after the person *above* Joe User.
: (And lest you say I know nothing about Linux - yes, I use it, I program
: under it, and I'm dying to write good apps and good interfaces to system
: calls.)
Go for it. But don't be suprised if not everyone flocks to your
interface.
--
- Mark Komarinski - koma...@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
Ask me about linux, the least expensive PC UN*X you'll ever see.
Bogdan Urma
: Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Yes you're right! Windows is for the average computer users and Linux
for the smart ones! There are fewer smart ones.
Bogdan
------
Bogdan Urma
Cornell University
Email: ba...@crux2.cit.cornell.edu
WWW: http://www.ruph.cornell.edu/burma/homepage.html
Philippe McLean
In article <3lbgp3$e...@tequesta.gate.net> ma...@gate.net (Russell
McGinnis) writes:
[blank lines snipped ]
|> to carve it on Mount Rushmore.) Linuxites take pride in using terms
|> like "end lusers;" To paraphrase Will Rogers, we're all "end-lusers"
|> just in different domains. What if you went to an auto garage and the
|> mechanic said, "Hey, man, if you can't grind your own camshaft then
|> you're not worth our time!" What if you climbed into a car and it
|> had manual spark and mixture controls? It is the people that Linuxites
|> snub who will ensure that future generations of Linuxites will be
|> railing against Bill Gates' grandchildren for controlling the computer
|> industry (or maybe the whole earth.)
ha ha
Seems that's always been the UNIX experience, it's by no means limited
to Linux. Some like it, some don't --- personally, I like grinding my
camshaft. >:)
Philippe
Erik Troan
Steven Miale <smi...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Linux users do care about Joe user - but not enough to give up what they
like about Unix or to write a ton of code they will never use. Look
at the msdos/HPFS filesystems, UMSDOS, dosemu, loadlin etc. - all of those are
for people who don't believe the gospel. I never use any of those things,
but my friends do.
The reason there isn't a good WYSIWIG word processor for Linux is that
the people who are capable of writing one are happy using TeX. I'm
not saying TeX is better for the average Windows user - it's plainly
not. It is better for most good programmers though, so why should they
write another one? That's why Linux needs commercial vendors who have
the motivation to write that kind of thing.
>Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
But average users can't get free code written for them - they have nothing
to give back. When I need a program for something, I write it or find
one. But I give something back to the community to reward the efforts of
others.
>This is not going to win over the average user.
No it's not - but you'll find the Linux community has a different idea
of what it means to win over Microsoft.
As far as I'm concerned we have already won. I don't think we'll ever have
the same scale of users as Windows, but I don't want to. We have a dynamic
user base that gives me the apps I want. What good will it do me if
we get 10,000,000 users who don't contribute anything besides questions?
Linux gives me a great system to run, a fun hobby, job offers, and
friends in Europe. That's all I ask from my OS. We *have* won.
Erik
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm not a monster, I'm a prototype" - SeaQuest
Erik Troan = e...@sunsite.unc.edu = http://sunsite.unc.edu/ewt/
Phil Howard
>After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
>attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
>probably incite flames galore.
>Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Joe User doesn't have a clue. Hell, half the programmers out there
don't have a clue. Microsoft even hired some of them.
>Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
I've used Windows. The INTERFACE sucks. It grays out things I NEED to do.
Well maybe that's functionality, or actually, the lack thereof.
Functionality is critical. You MUST have it. Windows does have it, but
it is lame and deficient in many areas. It COULD be fixed without being
LINUX so it's not a "LINUX is better, nyah nyah" issue.
>I have experience with Joe User - I've taught them. They don't care about
>having a programming language embedded in their word processor. They don't
>care for CLIs. They like something that is easy for them to use and figure
>out, without having to spend a few hours staring at the man page or reading
>a manual.
So what? That doesn't mean you have to totally forget about the CLI.
That doesn't mean you have to make things work exactly the one way that
51% of the users want.
>Case in point: mount versus (say) AppleTalk's interface. Mount _can_ be
>easy to use, but it requires some knowledge of networking to hook two
>computers together. Appletalk? Any idiot can figure it out. Well, that's
>the point. I shouldn't _have_ to think about it. I should be thinking about
>my work, not about some matter which is secondary. So it's a bit slower. So
>what? It is _my time_ that is important.
Why are you expecting a user to play around with mount?
>Case in point: WordPerfect for Windows/Mac versus WordPerfect for SCO. Yes,
>the SCO port runs under Linux. OK - so? Why should I upgrade my OS and
>pay $$$ to get a Unix port of software I already have? Long file names?
>Already on the mac. (Long enough, anyway.) Already on OS/2 (not sure if
>there is a WP port for that platform yet, but it is coming.)
If you don't need it, don't get it. Linux isn't for everyone.
>Some work has already been done on improving the interfaces. That's nice.
>But the attitude of the thread has been one of "who needs an interface;
>just type double-bucky-bang. it's in the man pages."
>This is not going to win over the average user.
And I hope it would not, either.
>(And lest you say I know nothing about Linux - yes, I use it, I program
>under it, and I'm dying to write good apps and good interfaces to system
>calls.)
But I hope you never come to the conclusion that the world needs to have
just ONE operating system. LINUX is not for everyone. MACOS is not for
everyone. Windows is not for everyone. VMS is not for everyone. MVS
is not for everyone (or anyone I know). NT is not for everyone. OS/2
is not for everyone. DOS is not for everyone.
The best thing to do is for each person to figure out, or get help to
figure out, what OS (and computer system) they need.
I think Windows is a badly designed system. It was fine in the 1980's.
Now we are getting all dependent on it but it is still 1980's technology.
And technology improvement is NOT just in GUI. Functionality is lacking
in some ways in all systems and it, too, needs to be improved and not
ignored. I see improvements in NT and W'95. It should be a bit better
when these converge. Still many things are lacking.
Joe User is still another problem. He doesn't want to learn. I've found
people using computers with the manual still in the shrink wrap. I know
an awful lot about computers, but you will find worn paper edges on my
manuals. Of course I would not expect a corporate CEO to have to read
the manuals. But it should would be nice if the new application he was
putting on his computer in his office would install nicely, perfectly,
first time, with no glitches. That's an underlying functionality case
after he clicked on "OK to install".
As for GUI ... try VUI.
--
Phil Howard KA9WGN | Absolutely no trees were killed to produce this sig.
Unix/Internet/Sys Admin | Well, OK, we had to tie one up and torture it. So?
CLR/Fast-Tax | However, this is not the only sig I have. My other
ph...@fasttax.com | one is even more important. Its name is P226.
Kazimir Kylheku
Russell McGinnis <ma...@gate.net> wrote:
>Steven Miale (smi...@cs.indiana.edu) wrote:
>: After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
>: attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
>: probably incite flames galore.
>: Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
>
> like "end lusers;" To paraphrase Will Rogers, we're all "end-lusers"
> just in different domains. What if you went to an auto garage and the
> mechanic said, "Hey, man, if you can't grind your own camshaft then
> you're not worth our time!"
I think that this analogy is a little overblown. Few Linux users would
be able to grind out a kernel from scratch for instance, along with
all the device drivers, and a hierarchical file system.
A better analogy for an "end-loser" is the driver who can't change a
tire, sparkplug, worn fan-belt or the windshield detergent, so he pays
someone to do it for him.
To me, a guy who can't put on a spare wheel looks like a jackass in
front of his girlfriend, and the rest of the world.
> What if you climbed into a car and it
> had manual spark and mixture controls? It is the people that Linuxites
I wouldn't mind a manual mixture control, or at least an override.
Look, many airplanes allow the pilot to control the richness of the
fuel mixture -- granted, they have to do it to compensate for the wide
changes in altitude, among other things. It affects the performance
and fuel-economy of the engine. The timing of the spark relative to
the phase of the cylinder would be another nice thing to be able to
adjust. A lot of cars either have an electronic mechanism for that or
a centrifugal spring-loaded system that varies the delay with the RPM.
A manual crank is a very useful feature in a car. I can't believe that
some idiot would stoop to bashing the crank! It sure beats
push-starting your car should your battery be dead (or stolen!). A
manual crank can be implemented quite unobtrusively in an engine, as a
receptacle for a crank lever. I have seen some old European cars that
had this, though I'd be hard pressed to remember the specific
make/model.
Cars with automatic transmissions can't even be push started. If you
ever get stranded, you have to rely on some kind person to give you an
electric boost.
ron house
>After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
>attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
>probably incite flames galore.
>Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
>Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
This writer is dead right. Linux users do tend to hold garden-variety
users in disrespect. However, if you want lots of software to come
online for Linux, you will have to interest these users in the system
somehow. Linux is great, but Linux with its existing Unix application
software _and_ most of the software available under DOS would be
unbeatable! Think how good it would be if it got to the point where
Linux was the _first_ release for new software products! It will only
get to that point if efforts are made to interest less capable users.
--
Ron House. USQ | A nonviolent diet is the
(ho...@usq.edu.au) Toowoomba, Australia. | foundation for a nonviolent world.
Philippe McLean
|> A manual crank is a very useful feature in a car. I can't believe that
|> some idiot would stoop to bashing the crank! It sure beats
|> push-starting your car should your battery be dead (or stolen!). A
|> manual crank can be implemented quite unobtrusively in an engine, as a
|> receptacle for a crank lever. I have seen some old European cars that
|> had this, though I'd be hard pressed to remember the specific
|> make/model.
Sure, maybe for a fiat, but a 350? No thanks! Break your arm off.
Philippe
R Wilkens
People who use linux are generally developer-types who use it because
they work on a unix machine at school or work and want the same
functionality at home. It's rare, if ever, that you'll see a linux-only
machine because there are essentially no 'real' apps availible for it.
--
Rob Wilkens
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system,
and possibly program, of all time." -- Bill Gates
la...@imap1.asu.edu
: Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
Nope. Windoze '95 will win because the general public is ignorant about
computers and speed in general.
: Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
: and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
: useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
Do you realize what you just said? Functionality is a MUST before you
can have useability, not the other way around.
: I have experience with Joe User - I've taught them. They don't care about
: having a programming language embedded in their word processor. They don't
: care for CLIs. They like something that is easy for them to use and figure
: out, without having to spend a few hours staring at the man page or reading
: a manual.
Sure. Then they belong on the Macintrash. Your point?
: Case in point: mount versus (say) AppleTalk's interface. Mount _can_ be
: easy to use, but it requires some knowledge of networking to hook two
: computers together. Appletalk? Any idiot can figure it out. Well, that's
: the point. I shouldn't _have_ to think about it. I should be thinking about
: my work, not about some matter which is secondary. So it's a bit slower. So
: what? It is _my time_ that is important.
Yes. And when something is so easy to operate, there is usually no room
for configurability. Sounds peachy to me! I hate thinking for myself.
: Case in point: WordPerfect for Windows/Mac versus WordPerfect for SCO. Yes,
: the SCO port runs under Linux. OK - so? Why should I upgrade my OS and
: pay $$$ to get a Unix port of software I already have? Long file names?
: Already on the mac. (Long enough, anyway.) Already on OS/2 (not sure if
: there is a WP port for that platform yet, but it is coming.)
Oh, sure. System 7 on the MAC only bogs the system down to the point
where you get to wait several minutes on end, just to update your display.
: Some work has already been done on improving the interfaces. That's nice.
: But the attitude of the thread has been one of "who needs an interface;
: just type double-bucky-bang. it's in the man pages."
X-Windows wasn't concocted to iron socks, you know! God forbid we should
ever have to use the keyboard... all those letters and numbers and
stuff... whew! SCARY!
: This is not going to win over the average user.
Ever consider that Linux is geared towards the pro user, and not the
average user? Average users have no business using UNIX at all, IMHO!
: (And lest you say I know nothing about Linux - yes, I use it, I program
: under it, and I'm dying to write good apps and good interfaces to system
: calls.)
Okay, so if you're a pro-user, then Linux shouldn't be a problem for
you. Why are you complaining?
*****************************************************************************
| When the heart rules, foolish actions result. | Stephen S. Edwards II at |
| When the mind rules, we are led astray. | Silvertip Productions |
| When the spirit rules, we are invincible! | - la...@asu.edu - |
*****************************************************************************
Scott Penrose
Windows will always win, even over OS/2 or NT
2) I LOVE Linux and Windows NT. These operating systems provide
me with everything I desire. I use Linux as an information server
and router. The information is HTTP, EMail, Statistics (network
variety) AND it is a great tool for a network administrator (me)
and a programmer (me).
Windows NT runs every program I have ever needed to. As an
administrator of a network with Macs, Windows,Novell and Linux I
can administer all of these from NT including all the Mac,
Novell, Windows for Workgroups and Unix printers.
3) Windows 95 is already TOOOO complicated for Jo Blogs.
95% of the computer users I know don't know or need to know about
multi tasking. None of these people have any idea about DDE or
OLE, they just want to use one program, cut and paste does the
trick.
4% more of these users would like multitasking and better OLE/DDE
1% want something like linux (which is quite high really).
4) The Solutions
a. If linux becomes easier to use (eg like hideing unix
functions) then it looses its best features
b. The community need to be a little better educated, but not
much.
c. Windows 95 will take even more hold of the PC user market, and
I will continue to write software for this, esspecially email and
other information sharing between ALL platforms.
d. Multiplatforms *IS* the way to go.
e. We need a Graphics word processor in Linux which supports some
of the common PC based formats, eg: RTF and PS
f. We need all the apps in Linux/Unix to be capable of moving
between dat formats, as we have achieved with Graphics and the
MPeg movie. Strange that no one has developed beyond Text for
word processors.
Well done Linux. The greatest information server.
Well done Novell. The greatest file server.
Well done Windows. The greatest END USER (the important ones and
the majority) system.
And well done to everyone who makes my life easier by being able
to integrate the lot with Macs as well.
Regards: Scott
P.S. This really should not be an issue. The conclusion has
already been prooven over the last 10 years.
Joe Sloan
R Wilkens <rwi...@hubcap.clemson.edu> wrote:
> My 2 cents. Linux won't loose because it's not in 'the game.'
>People who use linux are generally developer-types who use it because
>they work on a unix machine at school or work and want the same
>functionality at home. It's rare, if ever, that you'll see a linux-only
>machine because there are essentially no 'real' apps availible for it.
Gee, that's funny! My main work machine is linux only... I do everything
on it; code development, email, desktop publishing, multimedia, games....
hmm... you must not get out much..
--
j...@wintermute.ucr.edu | College of Engineering
A linux machine! because a 486 | University of California
is a terrible thing to waste! | 909-787-3188
~
Andrew KUCHLING
: Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
: and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
: useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
Thesis: the idea of building GUI front-ends to Unix system
administration is doomed.
Reason: The standard Unix configuration files need to be
parsed, sometimes in complex ways; they're not particularly
well-designed for modification by programs. Yes, it can be done, but
it's not trivial; there are differences in formatting and command
style between programs. Worse, the functionality is quite extensive,
and there may be all sorts of interactions between settings; a user
might have modified a file by hand, and that really should be taken
into account. This means your GUI tool basically has to understand
sendmail and mount and NFS and every other possible thing that can be
configured.
That's why most Unix GUI administration tools usually only
handle the simple things: adding users, mounting NFS partitions, and
so on. They do things that can be performed by presenting lists and
letting the user choose one. They don't do complicated things like
setting up firewalls or configuring a Web server. Even commercial
companies with lots of time and money wind up producing tools that
only handle the easy cases; look at Novell UnixWare.
Conclusion: the idea of building GUI front-ends to Unix system
administration is doomed. There are a few solutions.
1) You can write shortcut programs that automate common tasks
like adding users. This helps, but it's not complete, and you still
have to learn about the configuration files eventually.
2) Forget about sendmail.cf, /etc/fstab, and all that. Design
your own administration system from the ground up: store parameters in
a database, don't allow modification without using the GUI, and design
it so it translates well to a graphical metaphor. But this isn't
Unix-compatible any longer; it's a Unix-like OS built around the Linux
kernel. Presumably this is what Caldera is doing, except their goal
might be a Windows lookalike, or an OS/2 lookalike, or whatever.
This is a nice solution, but all compatibility with the Unix
world is gone. You now have to convince people to use a new OS that's
incompatible with other OSes, and that's a tough job. Even IBM has
found it a difficult task to gain widespread acceptance for OS/2.
Note that such a Unix-like OS would still have cat and more and emacs;
only system administration would be different, but that would probably
be enough to keep people away. On the other hand, people *do* run
AIX. Maybe a Unix-alike OS would stand a chance after all...
Andrew Kuchling
fn...@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca
and...@dexotek.ca
(http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~fnord)
Tim Smith
>
> Yes you're right! Windows is for the average computer users and Linux
>for the smart ones! There are fewer smart ones.
In my various jobs, I've written almost all the parts that go into a
typical kernel, except for a file system. I've done scheduling, virtual
memory, network drivers, disk drivers, tape drivers, serial drivers,
IPC, network protocols, and stuff I don't remember. By the
measure that many seem to be using for smartness (e.g., how
much of the kernel they could write themselves if they were so
inclined), I'd have to be classified as one of the smart ones.
Now, could someone please explain to me why being smart means that
given a choice between something that is easy, so that both average
users and smart users can use it, and something that is hard, so that
only smart users can use it, I'd want to pick the later? Please use
small words, because I suspect that I'm going to have trouble following
this.
--Tim Smith
Kazimir Kylheku
>Steven Miale (smi...@cs.indiana.edu) wrote:
>
>you. Why are you complaining?
Because he is the champion of justice who advocates on behalf of that
mythical creature, The Utter Newbie.
We must help the Utter Newbie become immediately productive with a
'puter, because the whole economy rests on his shoulders! We can't
afford to have the Utter Newbie learning -- his time is far too
valuable to waste. We need a system that enables him to get right to
work.
Nigel Bovey
: Steve's right. (In fact, it's too bad that Gutzon Borhglum isn't around
: to carve it on Mount Rushmore.) Linuxites take pride in using terms
: like "end lusers;" To paraphrase Will Rogers, we're all "end-lusers"
: just in different domains.
1) Linux wasn't written for the average user. Was ANY Unix written for the
end user, if it was, I don't think they did a very good job :)
2) Linux is Free. Windows is NOT.
3) There is NO Hype about what Linux will have in the next version. You take
what you get.
4) Seeing as Linux is free, you can put up with the odd bug here and there.
At least you know it will probably be fixed in the next kernel fix. Which
isn't three years down the road.
5) If linux has something you don't like about, you can change it your self,
lets see you change the Win9x kernel.
It really comes down to what you like, some people like to have the power
over the OS, whereas others can't handle it. Theres no use comparing Linux
and Win9x because they are just two completly different OS's, Linux isn't
trying to edge out Win9x, More like Mickeysoft are worried about how a group
of home hackers/programmers could come up with an OS that mutli-tasks and
does everything Windows does, and it came out a couple of years before
any real Windows OS (yet to be seen that is).
--
/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- \
| Nigel Bovey | Williams/Renault Rules !!! |
| ni...@chch.planet.co.nz | Linux - The choice of the |
| Christchurch, New Zealand | GNU Generation! |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else? |
\ ---------------------------------------------------------------- /
Stephen Harris
: Linux users do care about Joe user - but not enough to give up what they
: like about Unix or to write a ton of code they will never use. Look
: at the msdos/HPFS filesystems, UMSDOS, dosemu, loadlin etc. - all of those are
: for people who don't believe the gospel. I never use any of those things,
: but my friends do.
Exclude loadlin from that list please :-) I can't use LILO because my
Linux partitions (2 of them at 700Mb each) start above the 1024 cylinder
limit.
I still need MessyDog because some of my hardware (eg scanner which requires
Windoze) won't work under Linux yet.
I'm a strong preacher of the gospel :-)
--
Stephen Harris
sw...@spuddy.mew.co.uk sw...@spuddy.uucp Spuddy Admin
The truth is the truth, and opinion just opinion. But what is what?
* Meeeeow ! Call Spud the Cat on > 01268 515441 < for free Usenet access *
Jeff M. Garzik
Phil Howard <ph...@zeus.fasttax.com> wrote:
>Joe User doesn't have a clue. Hell, half the programmers out there
>don't have a clue. Microsoft even hired some of them.
Did you know that one of the top 5 IS jobs is PowerBuilder/BASIC
programmer? Corporate America is paying big bucks to people who program
BASIC on the Windows platform. Half the programmers out there HAVE a
clue -- they're going after the money. And however evil MicroSoft may
be, they do treat their programmers well.
>I've used Windows. The INTERFACE sucks. It grays out things I NEED to do.
>Well maybe that's functionality, or actually, the lack thereof.
There's a difference between poor interface design and poor application
design. The *application* is the cute little thing that grays out
things you need to do. The interface is the thing that allows things to
be grayed out in the first place.
I'm one of those few people who are working towards making Linux easier
to use. Ease of use brings popularity, which in turn brings
programmers. More programmers means cool "new" things like multithreading,
increased stability, expanded kernel hardware support, etc...
*I* would certainly like to see the day when Linux becomes the
operating system of choice for both large corporation information servers
and Joe Schmo desktop workstations.
Jeff
--
Jeff M. Garzik | Pound for pound,
E-mail: jga...@cc.gatech.edu | another win for the hometown.
Home page: http://www.wwwi.com/~jgarzik |
Lisa Plahn
>Steven Miale (smi...@cs.indiana.edu) wrote:
<snip> and agreed,
>: Some work has already been done on improving the interfaces. That's nice.
>: But the attitude of the thread has been one of "who needs an interface;
>: just type double-bucky-bang. it's in the man pages."
>: This is not going to win over the average user.
>I still say we're going after the person *above* Joe User.
Oh, please don't say that, I'm an average user and have found Linux
infinitely better than Windoze.
For a student, I have lots of little files of lectures with very
similar names, and with Windoze it's almost impossible to give them a
decent name with only 8 characters available.
I still haven't figure out how windoze notepad or write can simulate
the grep command in linux. The same goes for the wildcard <?> when
searching for files, which comes in handy when trying to get files
that I named above.
>: (And lest you say I know nothing about Linux - yes, I use it, I program
>: under it, and I'm dying to write good apps and good interfaces to system
>: calls.)
Yes, please go for it.
>Go for it. But don't be suprised if not everyone flocks to your
>interface.
Not everyone, but poor students like me will.
>Ask me about linux, the least expensive PC UN*X you'll ever see.
Agreed, and the best, thanks Linus.
PS. No flames please, if I am wrong about windoze, then post here to
correct me, I apologize in advance.
Keith
>They don't do complicated things like
>setting up firewalls or configuring a Web server.
I agreed with mostly everything you said, but I'm a nitpicker and this one
small point got me. Web servers are now configured via graphical windows
now that the Netscape server is more prevalant. A friend of mine who works
for the school showed me the instuction book for the netscape server install
and it was a slick graphical interface.
--Keith
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith T. Garner "For the flower in the corner, by the room, in the
http://ux4.cso.uiuc.edu/~k-garner window, and the sun said it all" - Live
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Lindsey
>Steven Miale (smi...@cs.indiana.edu) wrote:
>: Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>: and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>: useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
> Thesis: the idea of building GUI front-ends to Unix system
>administration is doomed.
In general, I think many of us agree here, and it goes back to the principle of
`crawlspace' -- like an electrical technician only expects crawlspace in which
to work, because his job is specialised, system admins and such can only expect
a limited degree of, well, prettiness, when it comes to doing their job.
(There are a lot more parallels in the analogy, but for sake of brevity...)
--
Mark R. Lindsey [][] Operating Systems Philosopher / System Administrator
ma...@eskimo.com [][] South Georgia Digital Research Institute; Georgia, USA
Yuri Volobuev
: : to carve it on Mount Rushmore.) Linuxites take pride in using terms
: : like "end lusers;" To paraphrase Will Rogers, we're all "end-lusers"
: : just in different domains.
Hm, yesterday I went to my boss. He has installed Windoze-95 -- Final Beta
Release on his Pentium box. I had to wait for him for half an hour, and
decided to spend time playing FreeCell... it crashed two times, just during
my play. There was _no_ other processes running. Just I move the cursor,
and it reboots. Question: what have I said about this OS (hint: keep
in mind that my Linux was installed 5 months ago and has _never_ crashed so
far).
With all this Micro$oft stuff I feel myself HELPLESS. It does work, or it
does not, and there's no way I can affect it. On my Linux box, I feel myself
Master, on Windoze box I feel helpless -- and angry almost all the time.
Well, my opinion is not an opinion of regular user, I use Linux professionally
and IMHO it's the best thing one can get for multitasking, networking,
programming and other stuff, mainly for fun. I just can't imagine a
_professional_ who runs Windoze on his personal computer. I can even agree
with Mac :(((, but Windoze... In Russia, there's a wonderful word for people
who tend to use computers without a bit of knowledge about what they are doing:
chainik (tea-pot, or kettle). IMHO, Windoze is OS for kettles.
Well, the are a lot of applications for DOS, that's true, and it is the major
reason why people use Windoze. May be it's easy to use, but if you get to the
point where you can't use GUI, you're trapped. Say, something went wrong
during the initial setup and it keeps on crashing. What do you do? Call
Misro$oft? Good luck. No, you'll have to cope with command prompts,
various .ini files (without any description, BTW, or with descriptive files
in some odd places). Everybody knows how MS User's Guide helpful in
troubleshooting. You PC doesn't work? Check you power cable, have you
plugged it into socket? Yes, and it still doesn't operate? Contact our
our support representative.
Of course, as long as kettles use computers, Windoze-like OS will exist and
will be popular. When you think about what OS you need, just ask yourself:
who I am? If the answer is "kettle" -- you choice is straighforward, rush
to store, grab Windoze-9x and have fun. If you, however, think that you
can do _something_ more complicated then playing Minesweeper on your PC,
you choice is open: think Linux, think FreeBSD, OS/2 (I don't like it,
but people say it's cool), NeXTStep etc.
IMHO, there's no reason to compare these OS, they are for different people.
There's no need to point Linux advantages compared to Windoze, BG funs just
won't understand most of it, or will regard it as non-important. I remember
myself trying to get MS Mail to send messages in Internet... I remember
MS TCP/IP drivers for WWG 3.11... The _only_ working thing that can bring
Internet to your Windoze box is winsockets, produced _not_ by BG&Co, but
by hackers, and distributed freely, just the way all Linux soft is. All
_working_ Internet apps for Windoze are produced by third-parti companies.
But who cares? Any Linux user would be astonished with luck of kernel
support of TCP/IP, but regular Windoze user feels fine about it. Why worry?
Now they claim W95 has this support... I have seen -- no, don't be
foolished, it is _not_ support.
I have worked with DOS+Windoze for several years. Now I switched to Linux and
I say: since the first time I touched keyboard, it was my _best_ idea.
Sorry for my English, but it's not my native language.
Yuri
Henrik Harmsen
>After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
>attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
>probably incite flames galore.
>Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
>Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
For Pete's sake, why should Linux have to satisfy everyone from Joe ClueLess
to Alice Hacker? Look at what has happened to other projects that has tried
to be everything to everyone - they get bloated and ugly and won't make
anyone very happy. Windows 95 shows good signs of becoming just this, not
really good for anything, just a big bloated compromise...
Keep Linux mean and lean and fun.
-- Henrik
--
Henrik Harmsen Internet: d9...@dtek.chalmers.se
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
Henrik Harmsen
>Now, could someone please explain to me why being smart means that
>given a choice between something that is easy, so that both average
>users and smart users can use it, and something that is hard, so that
>only smart users can use it, I'd want to pick the later? Please use
>small words, because I suspect that I'm going to have trouble following
>this.
>--Tim Smith
sure. small words only.
if the easy option won't do what i want it to do, i'll
go with the more difficult option.
if the easy option is boring, i'll take the difficult option.
if the difficult option is lots and lots faster, i'll go
with that.
if the difficult option saves me time, i'll go with that.
-- henrik
Kazimir Kylheku
John Hartnup <S9H...@wsdps364.wsdl.uk.ibm.com> wrote:
>From the keyboard of Kazimir Kylheku (c2a...@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca) :
>
>: We must help the Utter Newbie become immediately productive with a
>: 'puter, because the whole economy rests on his shoulders! We can't
>: afford to have the Utter Newbie learning -- his time is far too
>: valuable to waste. We need a system that enables him to get right to
>: work.
>
>
>I'm tempted to return to the car metaphor here, but that's been done, so
>let's use... pencil sharpeners instead.
>
>The opinion expressed above ("what computer systems should do is get a
>newbie straight to work with the minimum possible learning time") is
>analogous to "I'll get the cheapest pencil sharpener in the shop. It works
>just as well as all the others".
You didn't catch the sarcasm in my message -- we actually are in
complete agreement. Who really gives a damn if we can raise the
productivity of some clueless newbie by 300%? It's costly to have
someone occupying the seat of an expensive workstation, wasting CPU
cycles.
Mind you, it's not like I don't do that myself from time to time! But
at least I don't call it work or "productivity". I call it what it is
-- fun and games.
Nathan Hand
: "Steven Miale" <smi...@cs.indiana.edu> writes:
: >After reading some of the threads and trying to understand the general
: >attitudes of the participants, I am going to state something that will
: >probably incite flames galore.
: >Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
: >Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
: >and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
: >useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
: For Pete's sake, why should Linux have to satisfy everyone from Joe ClueLess
: to Alice Hacker? Look at what has happened to other projects that has tried
: to be everything to everyone - they get bloated and ugly and won't make
: anyone very happy. Windows 95 shows good signs of becoming just this, not
: really good for anything, just a big bloated compromise...
: Keep Linux mean and lean and fun.
Its not clear why having an easy GUI would make Linux big and
bloated. Unlike poor Win95 users, linux-ers are going to have
the source! Id imagine an intuitive GUI would just mean there
would be new distributions. ie Learnux for beginners and good
ole Slackware once youve got some experience (Learnux is just
made-up... and I know the name sux).
So you could start small, then start exchanging the intuitive
crap for real applications. Unlike other OSs the system would
expand with the user... at the expense of some extra work for
the administrator. Linux for everyone.
Though I personally think linux is just fine where it is. Stop
making the intuitive crap and make the "power" stuff even more
powerful. I dont need nor want intuitive, nor do I think that
Joe User would ever install linux over Win95 or MacOS no matt-
er how intuitive it got. Linux is for people with a need/want
for a small inexpensive unix box.
Though the real choice in this matter lies in the hands of the
developers... not mine.
--
When I use a word it means just what I choose it +------------------
to mean - neither more nor less +----------------+ ... logic is only
--------------------------------+ a way of being ignorant by numbers
Lisa Plahn
<snip, snip, snip>
>Its not clear why having an easy GUI would make Linux big and
>bloated. Unlike poor Win95 users, linux-ers are going to have
>the source! Id imagine an intuitive GUI would just mean there
>would be new distributions. ie Learnux for beginners and good
>ole Slackware once youve got some experience (Learnux is just
>made-up... and I know the name sux).
As much as I'd like to fully utilise my mouse, and fingers, Linux is
actually quite intuitive to me at the moment (and I would classify
myself as the utter newbie, having used Linux for only a month or
so), I think if a newbie wants a GUI they can always run X.
>Though I personally think linux is just fine where it is. Stop
>making the intuitive crap and make the "power" stuff even more
>powerful. I dont need nor want intuitive, nor do I think that
>Joe User would ever install linux over Win95 or MacOS no matt-
>er how intuitive it got. Linux is for people with a need/want
>for a small inexpensive unix box.
Agreed, it is fine where it is. Disagreed, Joe User like me did (with
no regrets) install Linux over Windoze (Win 95 doesn't exist yet),
though windoze is still on my machine because it's the only way for
me to printout assignments (done using emacs) with nice fonts.
Linux is for me because it's good with file management (whether it's
Unix or not doesn't matter), whereas IMHO windoze is just a glorified
application loader. Last, it's inexpensive (free), and has yet crashed
or hang on me, unlike windoze.
>Though the real choice in this matter lies in the hands of the
>developers... not mine.
From reading other authors in this group, I hope that they may ease
their attitude with regards to utter newbie using Linux, because armed
with a "Complete Idiot Guide to Unix" and the man pages, I have made
Linux infintely more useful to me than windoze ever did.:-)
Again, thanks to Linus
Darin Johnson
> if the easy option is boring, i'll take the difficult option.
>
> if the difficult option is lots and lots faster, i'll go
> with that.
>
> if the difficult option saves me time, i'll go with that.
This is easily put into pictures. A spade is very easy to dig
with. No one ever has trouble with one after seeing someone
else use one. A backhoe is difficult, one must learn all the
controls, and often get permits to use one.
But, if you are digging a basement for a house, the spade will
be boring and slow, but it's certainly doable. The spade
power user will probably know it's time to switch to a shovel
though, but still be bored :-)
A reason left off is "generality", because often the harder to
use things may be able to do a wide variety of tasks. For instance,
you could ask "why use a Swiss army knife to cut a piece of paper
when you could use scissors?"
The problem with the original question is that it implicitly assumes
that the easy method and hard method are equivalent in all other
respects but easy of use. But I'm sure everyone will agree that
Linux and Windows 95 are not equivalent, no matter what side they
take.
--
Darin Johnson
djoh...@ucsd.edu -- Strange things are afoot at the circle-K...
Marcus Mcdonald
>"Steven Miale" <smi...@cs.indiana.edu> writes:
<snipped>
>>Windows 95 will win because Linux people don't care about Joe User.
>>Nearly all the participants in the thread see functionality as paramount,
>>and the interface icing on the cake. Functionality is more important than
>>useability to them. Fine - but not to the average user.
>For Pete's sake, why should Linux have to satisfy everyone from Joe ClueLess
>to Alice Hacker? Look at what has happened to other projects that has tried
>to be everything to everyone - they get bloated and ugly and won't make
>anyone very happy. Windows 95 shows good signs of becoming just this, not
>really good for anything, just a big bloated compromise...
Right on, Win95 is a perfect example. At my office the cad users refuse
to put windogs on their machines, while the secretary insists on having
either windows or a mac - a reasonably good set of options to cater for
different level of skills. When win95 finally does arrive I know the dos
users will be cursing the loss of HD space to something which they'll
never use.
BTW,(hope I'm not diluting this thread too much) but has anyone wondered why
windogs 3.1/3.11 comes with at least 12 disks + 3 disks for dos, while
system 7.1 for the mac comes on 6 disks total and still manage to do more
than windogs (does Microsloth owns shares in HD manufacturers?).
>Keep Linux mean and lean and fun.
Indeed it is.
cheers,
Michael Dillon
Steven Miale <smi...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>IMHO, someone should start organizing a massive project to create apps
>that are highly competitive with the ones being distributed on the Mac
>and PC. Hopefully, they would be free, just like Linux.
If this type of project is to succeed, it really needs support from other
UNIX communities such as the FreeBSD people and those who use commercial
brands of UNIX as well. Creating a great app for Linux is just about
identical to creating a great app for BSD or for Solaris etc... It
doesn't really fall under the UNIX umbrella; it is a separate thing like
the development of GCC or the X consortium.
However, the main thing lacking in developping these great apps is people
to champion the cause and organize it. The project needs, at minimum,
a mailing list, a monthly FAQ posted to all UNIX newsgroups and a WWW
home page with full details. Of course, this implies that a grand plan
already exists to be written about. One problem that will need to be hashed
out near the beginning is how to licence the software. Will it be
GPL, LGPL or BSD style licencing?
>I've been seriously considering starting work on a word processor written
>in Python and Tk. It would have all the common functionality needed to
>write papers and such - fonts, spacing, justification, foot- and end-notes,
>etc.
And if it's file format was SGML conformant with style sheets for the
formatting, then it would make the documents very portable and easy to
use for building searchable document archives. This would take it one
step beyond current PC word processors and doesn't need to be difficult
to implement because you don't need to have a full-blown 100% SGML
implementation; just follow the syntax rules and design a DTD for your
document format.
>Plus, having it based on an interpreted language would give hackers the
>power to extend it, while still providing everything the basic user needs.
Precisely. This matches the whole UNIX model of making everything into a
tool that can be used in combination with other tools that have not even
been conceived of yet. Be careful with Tk's interprocess communication
stuff. It isn't perfect and I believe some folks have been experimenting
with more secure and more useful ways to do it. comp.lang.tcl has a lot
of Tk experts on it, so best to ask them.
>Similarly, someone should take over minicom and try to improve some things,
Rip it to shreds and glue it back together with Tk and a scripting
language. It would be nice if all the apps used the same scripting
language internally, but failing that, it would be nice if the components
could be fairly easily reused with other scripting languages like TCL or
Embedded Perl.
--
Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-549-1036
Network Operations Fax: +1-604-542-4130
Okanagan Internet Junction Internet: mic...@junction.net
http://www.junction.net - The Okanagan's 1st full-service Internet provider
Mikko Rauhala
: nat...@bin.anu.edu.au (Nathan Hand) writes:
: though windoze is still on my machine because it's the only way for
: me to printout assignments (done using emacs) with nice fonts.
Ever tried TeX?
-Mjr
Dan Newcombe
e431...@student.uq.edu.au (Marcus Mcdonald) wrote:
>d9...@dtek.chalmers.se (Henrik Harmsen) writes:
>BTW,(hope I'm not diluting this thread too much) but has anyone wondered why
>windogs 3.1/3.11 comes with at least 12 disks + 3 disks for dos, while
>system 7.1 for the mac comes on 6 disks total and still manage to do more
>than windogs (does Microsloth owns shares in HD manufacturers?).
I was under the impression that a lot of Mac stuff was actually implemented
in hardware, therefore, since you have the Mac, some of the stuff Windows
must do in software has already been put in it.
Though I could be wrong.
--
Dan Newcombe newc...@aa.csc.peachnet.edu
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"And the man in the mirror has sad eyes." -Marillion
Daniel Hollis
: In article <3lcch1$s...@zeus.fasttax.com>,
: Phil Howard <ph...@zeus.fasttax.com> wrote:
: >Joe User doesn't have a clue. Hell, half the programmers out there
: >don't have a clue. Microsoft even hired some of them.
: Did you know that one of the top 5 IS jobs is PowerBuilder/BASIC
: programmer? Corporate America is paying big bucks to people who program
: BASIC on the Windows platform. Half the programmers out there HAVE a
: clue -- they're going after the money. And however evil MicroSoft may
: be, they do treat their programmers well.
Bullshit. You've obviously _never_ dealt with MS support. We spent $500
to get the MSDN level II stuff and even then support is mediocre. Try
finding one single MS support person who knows a single thing about ODBC
and you'll see what I mean.
-Dan
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Hollis | Seiyuu Daisuki! | mokkori.jcic.org servers:
JCIC System Administrator | Orikasa Ai | http:LPA-HOWTO (Linux page)
http://www.jcic.org/ | Yokoyama Chisa | http:SM.html (SM Records page)
dho...@hq.jcic.org | ("(^_^)") | Ztalk (Internet voice mail)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Sloan
> though windoze is still on my machine because it's the only way for
> me to printout assignments (done using emacs) with nice fonts.
I am having smashing good success with LaTeX/dvips/ghostview under X -
professional quality output, but a bit more to learn than the windoze
wysiwyg editors...
/jjs
--
(Thanks to Doug Sewell (do...@cc.ysu.edu) (http://cc.ysu.edu/doug)
for this .sig 8-)
It's reported that Canter & Siegel search for and archive all articles
that contain their names or "Green Card". This .sig is to help them.
Christopher B. Browne
>with. No one ever has trouble with one after seeing someone
>else use one. A backhoe is difficult, one must learn all the
>controls, and often get permits to use one.
This is a pretty good "picture".
>But, if you are digging a basement for a house, the spade will
>be boring and slow, but it's certainly doable. The spade
>power user will probably know it's time to switch to a shovel
>though, but still be bored :-)
If someone doesn't know what backhoes do, and people claim that
they're evil and nasty, produce smoke, and are hard to use, then
they might be able to convince people to ignore them. Particularly
if they don't understand how a backhoe works.
>A reason left off is "generality", because often the harder to
>use things may be able to do a wide variety of tasks. For instance,
>you could ask "why use a Swiss army knife to cut a piece of paper
>when you could use scissors?"
This is also a useful notion.
I can reasonably generalize that there is *no* particular task
for which a Swiss army knife cannot be "beaten out" by some
alternative tool. A real pair of pliers is better at "plying"
things. A real screwdriver is easier to use. A simple folding
knife is likely to be better for cutting things. (From whence I
commonly carry both a Swiss army knife and a Spyderco Clippit.)
There is *no* task for which a Swiss army knife is the best
tool for the job.
However, I can't afford to carry around the huge number of tools
required to do all the things *really well* that my Victorinox
does a moderately competent job at.
(On the other hand, a Gerber or Leatherman "multi-plier" tool may
be more useful than the typical Victorinox knife.)
Returning to the Windows/UNIX realm, it may be possible to write
some "optimal" system administration tool for some specific
network situation. That's going to be a specialized tool. A
set of 30 or 40 such specialized tools are going to represent
a wondrous environment, but probably one that isn't very portable.
UNIX provides more of the "Swiss Army Knife" approach; not as
refined in some respects, but:
a) It will function under hostile conditions.
b) It is versatile. More specialized systems won't handle changed
conditions nearly as well.
c) The critical portions are fairly small and portable. X is not
generally critical. If you eliminate that, and some of the SVR4
bloat, UNIX is very small compared to MS-Windows, and positively
miniscule compared to Windows NT.
--
Christopher Browne - cbb...@io.org
In most of their applications, GUIs are primarily a tool that enables
capitalists to exploit cheap, dispensable, unskilled labour - The GUI
Manifesto
m...@cis.nmclites.edu
just an interesting little blurb.
bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu
|> Absolutely!
|> IMHO, someone should start organizing a massive project to create apps
|> that are highly competitive with the ones being distributed on the Mac
|> and PC. Hopefully, they would be free, just like Linux.
Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
hacker who had never touched UNIX until this fall (my freshman year in college)
and ended up installing Linux on my computer less than four months after my first
exposure to it. The only time I _EVER_ load up DOS/Winblows is to write papers,
because Linux doesn't have a good WYSIWYG word processor.
|> [ If there is anyone out there who would like to take part it in, please
|> let me know; if there are enough volunteers, we can actually start to
|> Make Things Happen.]
I was thinking about starting such a project but I don't know nearly enough about
UNIX programming to do it. Plus time is a problem (I go to MIT--enough said.)
Good luck.
And remember: UNIX is freedom! Free software equals freedom from Bill Gates.
Bill
Giao Nguyen
: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
free, and does just about everything.
Geens Ronald
but it sucks as a general wordprocessor. Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
Ron.
John Todd West
I couldn't disagree more. My roommate has a PowerMac 7100/66 running
the lastest versions of System and Word, and I can still type faster
than the machine can sling characters, and I'm not all that good of a
typist. In my copy of Word, I have to go alt-i-s, set the font, and
pick out the appropriate letter (if it's there at all), before I can
put in, say, an umlaut u. In LaTeX I have to type \"u, which, as far
as I'm concerned, is transparent, much unlike Mickeysloth's (yes, I
have an attitude) kludge. I've found that I can perform the text
editing functions that I need to to three to five times faster in jove
than I can in Word, and I sure don't have to shell out $140 to get the
latest version of jove or TeX.
As far as I'm concerned, jove/ispell/TeX/xdvi/dvips/ghostscript knocks
the socks off of anything that the Great Sluggard has come up with,
in speed, in flexibility, in reliability, and in useability. At the
same time, I suppose I should point out that I'm a complete computer
geek (my idea of a wild Friday night is upgrading gcc and reoptomizing
my kernel), and what I'm looking for out of a 'puter is a far cry from
what most users want.
Todd
Timothy Housel
: bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
: : Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
: : something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
: Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
: TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
: free, and does just about everything.
I just downloaded the Interviews doc editor and the Andrew ez editor. The
Interviews was ok, but i couldn't figure out how to get it to print to a
postscript file like it talked about in the man page. I may just be incompetent
though. I like ez even better. It took me a little bit to figure out how
to add styles, but it's ok. They're of course not nearly as polished as
something like Word, but they are free, WYSIWYMG, and not much learning
is required to use them (as opposed to TeX).
--
Tim Housel
bob...@hillres35.cc.purdue.edu
"We who are dead salute you."
Dan Newcombe
skipper@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (Giao Nguyen) wrote:
>bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>
>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>free, and does just about everything.
Oh christ...here we go again. Yes...we all know that TeX advocates love it, and
that they can type in the codes to bold something faster than you can select and
click an icon with a mouse. I'll even agree that TeX is nice, and would rather
use it than WP6.0.
BUT: This is the attitude that will help us lose this non-existant war. I don't
care how nice TeX is, or how low of an opinion you have of WYSIWYG, but the
average user is going to want something more along the lines of MS Office than
TeX. You can give them an 8 hour lecture and demo on the benefits of TeX, and
they will still want WordPerfect or some other WYSIWYG system. Accept it.
And there is no reason why both can't exist. So will every one please turn off their
newsfilters that looks for WYSIWYG and replies with use TeX.
-Dan
Ravi Krishna Swamy
In article <3me0ni$ie8...@news-demo.peachnet.edu>, newc...@aa.csc.peachnet.edu (Dan Newcombe) writes:
>In article <3mda7n$6...@solaris.cc.vt.edu>,
> skipper@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (Giao Nguyen) wrote:
>>bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>>
>>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
>
>Oh christ...here we go again. Yes...we all know that TeX advocates love it, and
>that they can type in the codes to bold something faster than you can select and
>click an icon with a mouse. I'll even agree that TeX is nice, and would rather
>use it than WP6.0.
>
>BUT: This is the attitude that will help us lose this non-existant war. I don't
>care how nice TeX is, or how low of an opinion you have of WYSIWYG, but the
>average user is going to want something more along the lines of MS Office than
>TeX. You can give them an 8 hour lecture and demo on the benefits of TeX, and
>they will still want WordPerfect or some other WYSIWYG system. Accept it.
>
>And there is no reason why both can't exist. So will every one please turn off their
>newsfilters that looks for WYSIWYG and replies with use TeX.
Finally, the voice of reason. Do you really think my mom can use TeX?
Actually she probably could, but it would probably take her so long to
learn it and she'd keep calling me and asking me how to use it. Actually
I don't use/know TeX, but I've heard so many good/bad things about it that
I'm going to put it on next weekend and try it out.
I've used ez some and it's a heck of a lot better than something like
windoze right. I wrote a paper on creating your own web page for my
technical writing class and I used Linux Netscape, xv, and ez to embed
lots of screen captures in the document. It looked rather nice. All
free stuff...
Still, I would have preferred to write it in something else, but hey it's
free and all so I'm not complaining. Before saying "We need an office suite
package" or we don't need one, think about whether you want Linux to be
used by the average computer user or not. If you want to keep Linux all
to yourself, then fine, we don't need a suite package. Heck, let's get rid
of X and window managers too. pico is too easy to use too (actually
I use vi for everything, pico blows!) I for one would like to see normal
people use Linux but that means having business apps and no xspread is not
a business app. What I'm really hoping for is that the Caldera Desktop
project turns out to be a success. They're working on a tool to use
windoze source code and make native linux apps from it. I think this is
supposed to be a lot better than the usual cross platform dev. tools.
Anyway, it was spawned off by Novell so maybe they'd release a PerfectOffice
for Linux or something like that. That would definitely get some attention.
Either way, I'll continue to use Linux because I like it, enough said.
Oh yeah, if you want info on caldera go to: http://www.caldera.com/
Ravi
--
"You know how dumb the average person is?"
"Well half the people are dumber than that."
DOS + Windoze = dumb half Linux + X = smart half
Ravi K. Swamy http://www2.ncsu.edu/eos/users/r/rkswamy/www/
rks...@eos.ncsu.edu ro...@sdf3.nowhere <- oops, no PPP yet...
Phil Hughes
: |> IMHO, someone should start organizing a massive project to create apps
: |> that are highly competitive with the ones being distributed on the Mac
: |> and PC. Hopefully, they would be free, just like Linux.
: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
: something along the lines of MS Office.
I think (based on some "inside information" that you will seem something
commercial along these lines appearing in the next couple of months. I
would (also) like to see a copylefted version but if it doesn't appear
soon I don't think it will capture much of the market.
--
Phil Hughes, Publisher, Linux Journal (206) 782-7733
usually ph...@ssc.com, sometimes f...@eskimo.com
Mark van Hoeij
>In article 6...@solaris.cc.vt.edu, skipper@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (Giao Nguyen) writes:
>>bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>>
>>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>>
>>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
True, but you'll have a hard time trying to convert wysiwyg people to TeX.
>Come on man, yoy cannot be serious about this. TeX is excellent for science papers,
>but it sucks as a general wordprocessor.
Then what kind of wordprocessor do you suggest?
>Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
>processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
For small documents yes, but for large documents (La)TeX is much faster.
Mark van Hoeij
Bryan Phillippe
Regarding all the WordProcessor posts that have been flyin' lately:
I have a personal dislike of conglomerate BullyBusiness
corporations like Micro$oft. That is why I use Linux; the cost of my
system (Zero dollars && Zero cents) in corporate world would be
hundreds. Being a college student spending all my little income on rent
and parking tickets, I have no money to burn on commercial software. I
have written papers in VI(!!!!!!) for cryin' out loud. I have used tons
of Linux/UN*X "word processing" apps, and they work great! But still...
They simply are NOT comparable to "works-type" programs as far as
beginning users are concerned. Before we all bash on a "user-friendly,
smily-icon WYSIWYG" app, think about this:
The Linux community has demonstrated it's pool of highly skilled
programmers and coders. I whole-heartedly believe that the talent in this
community easily outdoes that of Micro$oft or the people in the
Appleworld. And all the work done here is generally free and with
source!! This is truly the ideal evironment for development. Imagine an
X-based word processing package. One with scalable fonts and some form
of OLE. One that can check spelling, format page layout, print-preview,
and perform many other "works-like" functions.
In a windowed environment, Completely WYSIWYG, free,
and with source. (H*ll, for that, it wouldn't even need to be free, but
we'll focus on that for now). Portable all across the UN*X world. Not a
fat, bloated, slow and CPU hogging Windoze app. Not a happy-face,
warning window and network-locked-up Mac app. But a sleek, small,
super-fast and fully featured, portable word-processing package. Could
encorperate networking aspects, HTTP editting, source edit, on the fly
print, etc.
Then one could turn on some interest from current Windows-but-would-
be-Linux users, and the Linux world would grow even more. This is not an
impossible feat; it just hasn't had much interest or support for a long
time. Seems that it does now. I don't see anything wrong with
developing an awesome Word Processing package for Linux. It would add
the the functionality, and application-base of this truly cool operating
system.
Anyways, I've opened myself up to flames from H*lls deepest fury, now.
Fire away, Linuxers...
-Bryan
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Bryan J. Phillippe <ad...@bryan.seanet.com> && <brya...@ecst.csuchico.edu>
..............................................................................
Call waiting should be drug into the street and shot
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Calvin Browne
>In article 6...@solaris.cc.vt.edu, skipper@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (Giao Nguyen) writes:
>>bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>>
>>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>>
>>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
>>
>Come on man, yoy cannot be serious about this. TeX is excellent for science papers,
>but it sucks as a general wordprocessor. Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
>processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
I rememeber preparing an 80 page document in Word 6. It was so slow I actually
thought it had crashed a couple of times. (This was on a 386 with 8 meg). Yet
we were regularly able to compile much larger documents under TeX/LaTeX on a
386 with 12 meg with at least 4 other users also working on the box, NFS, uucp
feeds now and then etc etc Under SCO Unix.
Give me Word 6 under Linux and I'll buy a mickeysoft product with a smile.
Until then, for my 500 page manual I use TeX and my 2 Page fancy faxes I'll
use windows write....
--Calvin
Ravi Krishna Swamy
In article <D6vnJ...@eskimo.com>, f...@eskimo.com (Phil Hughes) writes:
>: |> Absolutely!
>: |>
>: |> IMHO, someone should start organizing a massive project to create apps
>: |> that are highly competitive with the ones being distributed on the Mac
>: |> and PC. Hopefully, they would be free, just like Linux.
>
>: something along the lines of MS Office.
>
>commercial along these lines appearing in the next couple of months. I
>would (also) like to see a copylefted version but if it doesn't appear
>soon I don't think it will capture much of the market.
>--
>Phil Hughes, Publisher, Linux Journal (206) 782-7733
>usually ph...@ssc.com, sometimes f...@eskimo.com
So I guess you can't tell us anything else on this "inside info" huh?
It would be kind of nice to know. :) Is Linux Journal going to run
an article on it or at least advertisements from whoever is making this?
Just questions. btw, Linux Journal is a great magazine. It's nice
to see a computer magazine that doesn't have anything to do with
Mickeysoft programs.
Stephen Harris
: Come on man, yoy cannot be serious about this. TeX is excellent for science papers,
: but it sucks as a general wordprocessor. Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
: processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
All depends on what you are used to. I can do things in groff that I wouldn't
have the foggiest idea how to do in Word. I can type quicker in vi or
MicroEmacs, and find and edit my text quicker. Why? Because I've been doing
it for 7 years, whereas my Word skills are close to zero (yeesh, but I can
still read menu bars and online help better than the users who use it!) and
my WordPerfect skills are adequate (and still better than some who call
themselves wordperfect experts).
People are different. Most people don't know what they want, so they stick
with Microsoft on the theory that it must be easy because it's pretty
pictures.
But them I'm just a guy who, when told "We want a computer - what do you
recommend", asks "What do you want to do on it?"
--
rgds
Stephen
Gerry S Hayes
>science papers, but it sucks as a general wordprocessor. Plus I'm
>pretty sure that any Windows word processor is a lot faster to work
>with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
Your first sentence is fairly correct; TeX is good at doing papers,
reports, and other such documents. It is very poor at doing magazine
layout, newspapers, or newsletters - things where visual layout is
stressed.
TeX is certainly faster than a word processor for doing what it is
good at - I can TeX a page of lecture notes (mostly mathematical
equations that are fairly complex) significantly faster than I can
write them by hand. I can't even come close to my handwriting speed
in, say, Word for Windows or AmiPro (let alone ez. Urgh!) If you
want to lay out a page in TeX with pictures, dialog boxes, and such
then it will be slower than FrameMaker or AmiPro, though.
TTFN,
Sumner Hayes
sum...@cmu.edu
Dan Newcombe
Bryan Phillippe <ad...@bryan.seanet.com> wrote:
>corporations like Micro$oft. That is why I use Linux; the cost of my
>system (Zero dollars && Zero cents) in corporate world would be
Bull! Linux is very expensive. Lets see:
The 3 CD-Roms I've gotten over the years (for conviencence): $80
Adaptec 1542C for the SCSI drives I got as a wedding present: $250
A second IDE drive: $100
4 Meg of memory: $125
Microsoft Keyboard: $100
Three button mouse: $20
28.8K modem for PPP: $180
Assorted books: $200
Math Co-Pro: $20 (don't ask :)
Total Linux has cost me: $1175
Total microsoft has cost me: 35% of my sanity.
Note: some things, like the keyboard, IDE, and memory was because Linux
made me want to use my computer a lot more than DOS/Windoze did. And since
Linux was my intro. to Unix, I needed some help in the way of the books.
Also, some of the books are for projects I'm working on under Linux.
And I'm looking at getting a P90 w/ 16+ Megs just for Linux.
Yes...Linux is much more expensive than any other OS I have.
But I woulnd't spend nearly as much on any other OS :)
Very un-seriously,
Scott Schwartz
| Imagine an X-based word processing package. One with scalable fonts
| and some form of OLE. One that can check spelling, format page
| layout, print-preview, and perform many other "works-like"
| functions.
Wirth's Oberon system comes with an editor that can do that. It's an
operating system/window system that was designed to run on a home
grown workstation, called Ceres, and written in a language called
Oberon, which is sort of an object oriented subset of modula-2. The
user interface is consciously very different than the usual
Mac/Windows/X11 style: this is a feature. The system is very
minimalistic, but very fast, and very, very effective. It's been
ported to everything in sight: you can run it in an X window under
unix. If you do that, the editor makes a pretty fair WYSIWYG word
processor. The architecture of the system is such that all
applications are extensible: the editor knows about equations because
of a separate, dynamically loaded, module.
You can ftp the binaries for various ports from neptune.inf.ethz.ch.
Commercial versions are available. There are a few books about it,
well worth reading. There's a newsgroup, comp.lang.oberon for it.
Giao Nguyen
: hundreds. Being a college student spending all my little income on rent
: and parking tickets, I have no money to burn on commercial software. I
: have written papers in VI(!!!!!!) for cryin' out loud. I have used tons
Ah, yes. The plight of the college student. Trust me. I know. There's a
reason I'm using Linux.
: of OLE. One that can check spelling, format page layout, print-preview,
: and perform many other "works-like" functions.
Okay. Here we go. Spelling: texpell or ispell. Formatting layout: (La)TeX.
Print preview: XDVI. Works-like:Xspread printed to a file, xfig for your
diagrams, etc.
: In a windowed environment, Completely WYSIWYG, free,
Excuse me, but why in hell's fury do we need WYSIWYG? Pretty interfaces
mean jack to me. Give me functionality and speed.
: Then one could turn on some interest from current Windows-but-would-
: be-Linux users, and the Linux world would grow even more. This is not an
Why do we want to convert Windows WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pull-down menu)?
: Anyways, I've opened myself up to flames from H*lls deepest fury, now.
: Fire away, Linuxers...
Fired.
: -Bryan
Mike Frisch
: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
I would be happy even with the functionality of Windows Write.
Sure, it's not the greatest word processor in the word, but it does have
the simple formatting/WYSIWYG features that are necessary in X-Windows.
Personally, I use Ami Pro for Windows as my word processor and I can't
see something comparable in features to that being in X for quite some
time, so I'd just be happy with something as good as Write.
Mike.
--
===============================================================
Mike Frisch EMail: mfr...@saturn.tlug.org
Northstar Technologies Compuserve: 76620,2534
Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA
Richard L. Goerwitz
>
>Excuse me, but why in hell's fury do we need WYSIWYG? Pretty interfaces
>mean jack to me. Give me functionality and speed.
No one is saying that he or she *needs* WYSIWYG. They simply *want* it.
What's wrong with wanting an integrated editor/previewer?
Don't be so arrogant.
--
Richard L. Goerwitz *** go...@midway.uchicago.edu
Ravi Krishna Swamy
In article <1995Apr12....@saturn.tlug.org>, mfr...@saturn.tlug.org (Mike Frisch) writes:
>On 11 Apr 1995 01:21:44 GMT, bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>
> I would be happy even with the functionality of Windows Write.
>Sure, it's not the greatest word processor in the word, but it does have
>the simple formatting/WYSIWYG features that are necessary in X-Windows.
>Personally, I use Ami Pro for Windows as my word processor and I can't
>see something comparable in features to that being in X for quite some
>time, so I'd just be happy with something as good as Write.
Heck, if all you want is Windoze Write then try out ez from the Andrew
package. I'm sure you can find it on sunsite.unc.edu or tsx-11.mit.edu
I've used it some, and it blows windoze write away. Now I haven't done
all of the following things, but they can be done. It has different
fonts as well as "standard heading fonts." Basically you highlight
something and click on title and it puts it in a default title font.
Click on "subheading" and it will put it in a smaller font, etc. It has
table formatting capabilities, a spell check, and the ability to import
MANY different picture formats. I recently wrote a paper on creating
your own web page. I used ez along with xv and Linux Netscape to embed
screen shots from Netscape. I thought it looked pretty cool. If
windoze write is all you want, then definitely use ez. The Andrew
package has some other programs too, but I haven't tried them out.
Christopher B. Browne
>>bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
>>
>but it sucks as a general wordprocessor. Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
>processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
a) Your editor is doing almost as bad a job as the ones that drop
spurious ^Ms at the ends of lines. Please reconfigure it for the *80*
column standard.
b) How can a Windows word processor possibly be as fast as TeX?
I haven't done this, but I could set up my print filter to handle
TeX files (it's already configured for .dvi and .ps) so that as soon
as you finish editing, you dump the file to lpr. A few moments later,
the document comes out on the printer.
How much faster can you get?
You're not waiting for Word to save the file (watch that "save"
bar drone away for 15 seconds...), and you're not waiting for the GUI
to display things. Fast, fast, fast.
I can do up a letter using cat > letter.tex, which has *no* GUI
overhead, and so long as I don't make any typing errors (which isn't
*too* unusual), that's at least a minute faster than:
- Loading up Word
- Watching the Parker Duofold title screen. (How disappointing. It's
the roller-ball edition. Why anyone would buy a ball pen Duofold
escapes me, when the fountain pen is *so* luxurious.)
- Popping up the Letter template.
- Picking the version of the Letter template.
- Filling in the blanks
- Waiting for Word to then fill in the template.
- Changing all of the things that the document style got wrong.
Doesn't sound very fast to me.
Jeff M. Garzik
Michael Dillon <mic...@junction.net> wrote:
>Rip it to shreds and glue it back together with Tk and a scripting
>language. It would be nice if all the apps used the same scripting
>language internally, but failing that, it would be nice if the components
>could be fairly easily reused with other scripting languages like TCL or
>Embedded Perl.
I agree to some extent... If major applications like a Linux word
processor are going to be usable for large projects (>200 page papers, a
lot of formatting options, etc.) -- then they cannot be written in TCL
or PERL. Why? Speed.
Word processors today need to be fairly efficient when it comes to
background repagination, spell checking, grammar checking, and
reformatting. All this takes a great deal of muscle.
A great example is my current checkbook program: cbb. It uses a Tcl/Tk
interface to PERL's dbm database routines. And once I pushed it beyond
a couple thousand transactions, it began to slow to a crawl...
Jeff
--
Jeff M. Garzik | Clothes make the man.
E-mail: jga...@cc.gatech.edu | Naked people have little or
| no influence on society.
Home page: http://www.wwwi.com/~jgarzik | -- Mark Twain
Mark Komarinski
: In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.95041...@bryan.seanet.com>,
: Bryan Phillippe <ad...@bryan.seanet.com> wrote:
: >corporations like Micro$oft. That is why I use Linux; the cost of my
: >system (Zero dollars && Zero cents) in corporate world would be
: Bull! Linux is very expensive. Lets see:
: The 3 CD-Roms I've gotten over the years (for conviencence): $80
: Adaptec 1542C for the SCSI drives I got as a wedding present: $250
: A second IDE drive: $100
: 4 Meg of memory: $125
: Microsoft Keyboard: $100
: Three button mouse: $20
: 28.8K modem for PPP: $180
: Assorted books: $200
: Math Co-Pro: $20 (don't ask :)
: Total Linux has cost me: $1175
: Total microsoft has cost me: 35% of my sanity.
: Note: some things, like the keyboard, IDE, and memory was because Linux
: made me want to use my computer a lot more than DOS/Windoze did. And since
: Linux was my intro. to Unix, I needed some help in the way of the books.
: Also, some of the books are for projects I'm working on under Linux.
: And I'm looking at getting a P90 w/ 16+ Megs just for Linux.
: Yes...Linux is much more expensive than any other OS I have.
: But I woulnd't spend nearly as much on any other OS :)
My cost for Linux:
Two CDs: $50
Optional upgrades, but I would have been happy with what I had:
Bigger monitor: $325
28.8 modem: $125
OS/2 2.1: $100
(And I probably would have made the same upgrades had I stayed with
OS/2)
Linux sure looks inexpensive to me.
Still running a 386/40 with 8M.
-Mark
- Mark Komarinski - koma...@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
"Sure we should sell California to the Japanese. It's going to fall into
the ocean anyway." - Car Talk (on NPR)
Raskolnikov
the Slackware CD is roughly half as expensive as most commercial OSs.
One could say that Windows 3.1 is the most expensive because you bought a
Pentium with a terrabyte HD and 32 MB RAM, quad speed CD-ROM, 15"
monitor, keyboard and printer. However, that would tell you very little
of how expensive the OS is.
__
/ /\
----==-- _ / / \ *** Rodion Raskolnikov ***
---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ / / /\ \ lar...@unm.edu, ch00...@pi.lanl.gov
--==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / / /_/\ \ \ ch00...@arriba.nm.org
-=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ /______\ \ \Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
A proud member of TeamLinux \_________\/ The system of a GNU generation
Bart Van Hauwaert
: The Linux community has demonstrated it's pool of highly skilled
: community easily outdoes that of Micro$oft or the people in the
: Appleworld. And all the work done here is generally free and with
: and perform many other "works-like" functions.
Forget it. Why? Those skilled people you name are simply not interested in
writing such a program. Imagine yourself hacking a kernel, implementing
multi-threading or the latest Van Jacobson paper or making things POSIX.4
compliamt and stuff. That's a whole lot more interesting than programming
the next few thousants checks to see if some lame winslows user can't make
your next generation WYSIWYG word-processor.
It get even worse if when you are busy doing that you simply must conclude :
how good I am doing this anyway, it will NEVER OR NEVER give me the same
functionality TeX & VI/Emacs whatever will give me. That's it.
I cannot imagine someone being enough SM minded to bring himself to such
an effort.
: warning window and network-locked-up Mac app. But a sleek, small,
: super-fast and fully featured, portable word-processing package. Could
: encorperate networking aspects, HTTP editting, source edit, on the fly
: print, etc.
But should also include the some >x-hunderd boring dialog boxes, each a little
different, but still resembling good enough to make it boring and boring and
boring again.
cu bart
--
_________
|
| Bart Vanhauwaert
| vhau...@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
|_________
Michael K. Johnson
So I guess you can't tell us anything else on this "inside info" huh?
An article on it will be in the June issue, which comes out in May.
It would be kind of nice to know. :)
Since Caldera will be at NCSU's Linux Expo, go and ask them directly
when they come. Also, some of the same information that is in the
article is now in their Web page, at http://www.caldera.com/.
Just questions. btw, Linux Journal is a great magazine. It's nice
to see a computer magazine that doesn't have anything to do with
Mickeysoft programs.
Well, if microsquish ports their products to Linux, we'll feel obligated
to cover that and give them a notice in our New Products section... :-)
But that hasn't happened yet, and I haven't reserved editorial space
for them at this rate.
michaelkjohnson
Michael K. Johnson
Personally, I use Ami Pro for Windows as my word processor and I can't
see something comparable in features to that being in X for quite some
time, so I'd just be happy with something as good as Write.
Ami Pro is available for X. They were just reviewed against WP in one
of the unix mags which I appear to have misplaced... Perhaps they
would consider a port to Linux some time. If you would seriously be
willing to purchase it, I'm sure Lotus would like to know. I doubt
that they are ignorant of Linux.
michaelkjohnson
Chris Toshok
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
True, but you'll have a hard time trying to convert wysiwyg people to TeX.
True, so why try. People will always have their preference, so why
not attempt to cater to everyone? I think this sort of argument ("I'm
faster with TeX/WYSIWYG sucks") is really pointless. Religious flame
wars do nothing but waste both bandwidth and time. Who cares if you
can crank out 20 papers a week using TeX and only 1 using a word
processor. I for one don't. Use what you like, but allow other
people the same opportunity.
>Come on man, yoy cannot be serious about this. TeX is excellent for science papers,
>but it sucks as a general wordprocessor.
Then what kind of wordprocessor do you suggest?
Ok, this begs being said once again: TeX is _not_ a wordprocessor.
It doesn't even try to be. The point is fairly small, but it's
important. The point of using a WYSIWYG interface is that you're
insulated from any sort of markup, which TeX/LaTeX/SGML/HTML force you
to use.
>Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
>processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
For small documents yes, but for large documents (La)TeX is much faster.
For you personally. Heck, I'm much faster when I let LaTeX typeset
things for me. The point is that some people don't want to deal with
LaTeX.
It seems that many X-WYSIWYG projects are all happening around now.
There's the linux-word people, the XWord people (of which I'm one),
the WREAVOC people (spelling?). This is really neat. I'm not
entirely convinced that everyone should team up and provide the
"ultimate word processor (tm)". To allow people the freedom to pick
and choose the utility they like, we have to have more than one
utility. I'm sure all the projects will have their good and bad
points, just like vi and emacs, but at least there's some development
happening.
Might as well plug XWord some more -- for more information on it,
try "http://www.cs.uidaho.edu:8000/hungry/microshaft/xword.html".
--
+------------------------------+----------------------------------+
|Chris Toshok | email: tos...@cs.uidaho.edu |
| of The Hungry Programmers | |
| www: http://www.cs.uidaho.edu/~toshok |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
On the internet, no one knows you're a CHICKEN! A GIANT CHICKEN!
-- Denis Moskowitz
Neklan
>On 11 Apr 1995 01:21:44 GMT, bsch...@yankee-stadium.mit.edu wrote:
>: Yeah. What Linux really needs is a suite of applications that compete with
>: something along the lines of MS Office. I consider myself to be a neophyte UNIX
>
> I would be happy even with the functionality of Windows Write.
>Sure, it's not the greatest word processor in the word, but it does have
>the simple formatting/WYSIWYG features that are necessary in X-Windows.
>see something comparable in features to that being in X for quite some
>time, so I'd just be happy with something as good as Write.
That is not quite the case. WP have already released a statically
linked version of WP 6.0 for SCO unix. This is able to be run on linux
with X.
Perry F Nguyen
Its homepage is at : http://www.cs.uidaho.edu:8000/hungry/microshaft/xword.html
--
--
__________ ___________
\______ \ __________________ ___.__. \_ _____/
| ___// __ \_ __ \_ __ < | | | __)
| | \ ___/| | \/| | \/\___ | | \
|____| \___ >__| |__| / ____| \___ /
\/ \/ \/
pfng...@netcom.com
Finger for PGP public key.
Albert K T Hui
>nat...@bin.anu.edu.au (Nathan Hand) writes:
> though windoze is still on my machine because it's the only way for
> me to printout assignments (done using emacs) with nice fonts.
Try [vtl]grind. :)
> From reading other authors in this group, I hope that they may ease
> their attitude with regards to utter newbie using Linux, because armed
> with a "Complete Idiot Guide to Unix" and the man pages, I have made
> Linux infintely more useful to me than windoze ever did.:-)
Quite a number of people identified themselves as ``utter newbie''.
The fact is, they aren't! A real utter newbie won't read the docs or
man pages (have you dealt with this sort of people before?).
I agree that it is a wrong approach to build an environment that will
cater for everyone---just see what happened to PL/I and Ada. It is
rather immaterial to argue that system X is better than system Y. A
smart user, newbie or guru alike, will use whatever system best suited
for the need (when given a choice, that is).
Windows 95 took on the elephantine approach because it has to gain as
large a market share as possible, this is the correct stratedy for
Microsoft. Linux is in a different situation because there is no point
to penetrate every sector of computing, except perhaps to generate a
greater momentum, which might turn out to be a Bad Thing---bound by the
newly expended user base, we have no choice but to satisfy them all,
and repeat the mistake I mentioned above.
However I think it is good to make the environment more intuitive,
without sacrificing too much usability; but the existing ``powerful''
means must be retained. An example would be the xvset program which
provides an intuitive frontend for xset in a way similar to the Windows
control panel. I dare say, the frontend approach is the correct way
to go---makes the interface more consistent and retains the
compatibility, and all the virtues of the low-level program (i.e.
robustness, portability, and efficiency). Not that I *NEED* an
intuitive interface, most user will agree with me that it is more
fun. We can perhaps learn something from NeXTStep.
--
`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._
. Albert Hui . \ "All that is gold does not glitter
s93...@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au o Not all those who wander are lost"
ava...@acslink.net.au \ The Riddle of Strider
Jason Van Patten
: Ami Pro is available for X. They were just reviewed against WP in one
: of the unix mags which I appear to have misplaced... Perhaps they
: would consider a port to Linux some time. If you would seriously be
: willing to purchase it, I'm sure Lotus would like to know. I doubt
: that they are ignorant of Linux.
Gee, I dunno about that. I called them up after reading that article
last week, and the sales guy I talked with sounded pretty clueless. They're
only supporting two platforms with Ami Pro, HP's and Solaris. I asked him if
there were any other ports planned and he responded with something like, "I
guess it's possible, but I really don't know."
(shameless plug: Get WordPerfect 6.0 for SCO, it works. :) )
Jason
--
Jason Van Patten | If at first you don't succeed, keep |
Clarkson University | on sucking till you do succeed. |
vanp...@phong.clarkson.edu | - Curly Howard |
Any opinions expressed here are actually yours, you just don't know it, yet.
alves
>Check out XWord - a MS Word lookalike ... still in very ALPHA
>Its homepage is at : http://www.cs.uidaho.edu:8000/hungry/microshaft/xword.html
Actually, it's not a MS Word look-alike, but it will do (or will soon
do) much of what people have spoken of in this thread. The biggest
hang-up is that it requires Motif. If I create a staticly linked
binary, is it legal to release it? Does this depend on my vendor's
(SWiM's) license?
So far XWord will allow you to type in a (nearly) WYSIWYG window,
change fonts and sizes, export to several formats, and read a couple
of them back in. It does word wrapping and page breaking. The
internal design is very flexible (although a bit memory hungry), so
things like inlined images etc are not too far off. Lines can be
left, right, center, or full justified (anything but left has a couple
of rendering bugs still, but there is a nice big redraw button near
the top of the window! :-))
The formats XWord will export to are PostScript, SGML (the dtd for
what it exports is in the distribution), and ASCII. I think that
there is also some rude HTML exporting ability. There are hooks for
TeX and LaTeX (just haven't written it yet). XWord will import the
SGML it writes, and ASCII.
I hope to write most of the importers with Antlr (PCCTS). The SGML
importer is written with Antlr. I run antlr before I release the
source, so you don't actually need antlr to build XWord.
A couple of days ago, I took a stab at hooking Guile (the GNU
extension language -- a scheme interpreter) to XWord. The currently
released version does not include any of this effort, but it looks
like this will work well. If I can get this to work, XWord will
become much more versatile. Guile/SCM is a very nice package.
We intend to GPL XWord (Although I haven't put all the spew in the
files yet - heh). We need help on this project. If you would like to
help, send mail to hun...@uidaho.edu.
If you want to get the source, check at the above url, or ftp to
pain.csrv.uidaho.edu. If you are not building on an SGI, you should
get the hungry viewkit from the same place. The next release (in a
few days) will most likely need Guile as well. I will put info about
where to get Guile on the web page. Archie would also tell you where
to get it. Look for 'guile-i.tar.gz'.
The internals of XWord are woefully undocumented. I will break down
soon and do this.
-seth
If you have questions, direct them to hun...@uidaho.edu
James F. Morris
alves <al...@cs.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>
>hang-up is that it requires Motif. If I create a staticly linked
>binary, is it legal to release it? Does this depend on my vendor's
>(SWiM's) license?
A *staticly* linked Motif application is freely distributable. NCSA
Mosaic for Xwindows is a good example of such an application. Most copies
of Mosaic on Linux ftp sites are staticly linked - otherwise, noone without
a Motif shared library could run them.
I don't think SWiM's license could superceed the actual Motif license, which
allows distribution of Motif applications, staticly linked ot otherwise. You
can't distribute the Motif libraries themselves, is all...
/--------------------------------------------------\
| Jim Morris | Internet: jfmo...@netcom.com |
| | CompuServe: 73670,762 |
\--------------------------------------------------/
--
/--------------------------------------------------\
| Jim Morris | Internet: jfmo...@netcom.com |
| | CompuServe: 73670,762 |
\--------------------------------------------------/
Darin Johnson
> there were any other ports planned and he responded with something like, "I
> guess it's possible, but I really don't know."
Salespeople are usually clueless. The trick of succeeding when
speaking with one is to say "can you direct me to someone who
*does* know?" Most salespeople that one contacts on the phone
have a sheet of paper listing products and platforms, and if
it's not on there then they don't know. Some places will have
a similar cheat sheet for anticipated products, but you can't
count upon it.
--
Darin Johnson
djoh...@ucsd.edu
My shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance - Babylon 5
Mark van Hoeij
> >Plus I'm pretty sure that any Windows word
> >processor is a lot faster to work with than Tex (on the same machine that is).
> For small documents yes, but for large documents (La)TeX is much faster.
>For you personally. Heck, I'm much faster when I let LaTeX typeset
>things for me. The point is that some people don't want to deal with
>LaTeX.
I wouldn't recommend everyone to use LaTeX (although I would
recommend to give LaTeX a try).
>It seems that many X-WYSIWYG projects are all happening around now.
>There's the linux-word people, the XWord people (of which I'm one),
Hey, this is great. Even though I don't use WYSIWYG editors, I still think
that a WYSIWYG is the most important thing which is currently missing in
Linux. You are doing many Linux people a big favor with your work, in
particular when this editor works in the same way as the editors people
are used to, so that they don't have to learn new things.
Mark van Hoeij
Tim Smith
>Actually, it's not a MS Word look-alike, but it will do (or will soon
>do) much of what people have spoken of in this thread. The biggest
>So far XWord will allow you to type in a (nearly) WYSIWYG window,
>change fonts and sizes, export to several formats, and read a couple
>of them back in. It does word wrapping and page breaking. The
>internal design is very flexible (although a bit memory hungry), so
>things like inlined images etc are not too far off. Lines can be
>left, right, center, or full justified (anything but left has a couple
>of rendering bugs still, but there is a nice big redraw button near
>the top of the window! :-))
How about outlining? That's what I find really useful in Word. If I
know exactly what I want to say, and how I want to say it, so that no
thought is required as to content, but only layout, something like TeX
is the way to go. But when I'm *creating*, the outline view is very
useful, and something like TeX is useless.
For any given thing that Word does, there are better tools. Dedicated
outliners are better at making outlines. TeX is better at formatting.
Dedicated page layout programs are better at layout. But for a lot
of ordinary writing, Word does a very good job of rolling these all
into one program and integrating them together. This is what I'd like
to see captured in a Linux Word-like program.
--Tim Smith
Thumper!
just want to sit down and in 15 minutes have something nice that prints out so
I can make it look like my Pentium and LaserJet can do something other than
Courier that looks like my typewriter.
And I like WYSIWYG because I don't don't spend all day slaving on stuff, so I
don't really know what it'll look like.
Also, please include in my dream list: that the application can actually print
these nice fonts on my LJ 4 without me having top spend another few hours
trying to figure out why ghostscript won't print.
--
Thumper! Leporidae Extrordinhare
thu...@vfr.interceptor.com The Adrenaline Domain
"Life is to achieve the Impossible"
Mike Frisch
: That is not quite the case. WP have already released a statically
: linked version of WP 6.0 for SCO unix. This is able to be run on linux
: with X.
Have you actually used this? If so, how does the performance
compare with say the Windows version? I am just trying to get an idea as
to how usable the SCO version would be under Linux. What is the list
price on this (consider all UNIX software is twice or three times a
DOS/Windows counterpart).?
Christopher B. Browne
Jeff M. Garzik <jga...@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>In article <3md3ca$7...@okjunc.junction.net>,
>Michael Dillon <mic...@junction.net> wrote:
>>Rip it to shreds and glue it back together with Tk and a scripting
>>language. It would be nice if all the apps used the same scripting
>>language internally, but failing that, it would be nice if the components
>>could be fairly easily reused with other scripting languages like TCL or
>>Embedded Perl.
>
>I agree to some extent... If major applications like a Linux word
>processor are going to be usable for large projects (>200 page papers, a
>lot of formatting options, etc.) -- then they cannot be written in TCL
>or PERL. Why? Speed.
>
>Word processors today need to be fairly efficient when it comes to
>background repagination, spell checking, grammar checking, and
>reformatting. All this takes a great deal of muscle.
>
>A great example is my current checkbook program: cbb. It uses a Tcl/Tk
>interface to PERL's dbm database routines. And once I pushed it beyond
>a couple thousand transactions, it began to slow to a crawl...
Actually, the problem is neither Perl nor Tcl/Tk.
The problem is dbm.
cbb gets slow because it needs to load all of the transactions in
at once, which, strictly speaking, it *doesn't* need to do.
dbm was a very nice way of "prototyping" it. If I could find a
database library that could easily be interfaced with Perl that could
handle an equivalent to SQL "select" statements, it could well be
faster with 50000 transactions than it is with 500 now.
(Then there was an abortive prototype I did last month where I
turned everything into text files. *Not* a good idea; there's
enough re-referencing of transactions that that turned out to be
excruciatingly slow.)
To summarize (and generalize), the speed problem is not necessarily
the fault of the particular tools in question; when a program is slow,
it's usually due to:
a) Lots of difficult processing being done. (It takes an hour because
it needs to take an hour.)
b) A poor choice of algorithms at some level.
In cbb's case, it's situation "b)." And there is a good feel for
where the problem is (namely at the database functionality level),
and how to fix it.
If anybody can suggest a *simple* database library that:
a) Interfaces easily with Perl, and
b) Sorts instead of hashes,
I would be exceedingly interested.
I've considered:
a) MSQL - which is a little too fiddly to get going with Perl.
b) Postgres - more fiddly than MSQL
c) Typhoon - would require a pretty large driver program in C
that I don't feel like writing; essentially no Perl interface.
Suggestions would be welcomed.
Mike Frisch
: Ami Pro is available for X. They were just reviewed against WP in one
: of the unix mags which I appear to have misplaced... Perhaps they
: would consider a port to Linux some time. If you would seriously be
: willing to purchase it, I'm sure Lotus would like to know. I doubt
: that they are ignorant of Linux.
Yes, I am aware of the other UNIX/X versions of Ami Pro that do
exist, but I am not too sure whether or not Lotus would ever consider a
Linux version. If they did port it to Linux, I'd buy it at twice the
price of the Windows version. I'll have to see if they have an email
address and if so, mail them a little note about it.
Dan Pop
>Call me a wimp, but I don't have the time to learn TeX or something else. I
Probably because you spend too much time playing Doom or Descent :-)
>just want to sit down and in 15 minutes have something nice that prints out so
>I can make it look like my Pentium and LaserJet can do something other than
>Courier that looks like my typewriter.
>
>And I like WYSIWYG because I don't don't spend all day slaving on stuff, so I
>don't really know what it'll look like.
>
>Also, please include in my dream list: that the application can actually print
>these nice fonts on my LJ 4 without me having top spend another few hours
>trying to figure out why ghostscript won't print.
>
From what you write, it seems that you want a program that can be used
without exercising any single brain cell. I'm affraid Unix is not for
you. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Dan
--
Dan Pop
CERN, CN Division
Email: dan...@afsmail.cern.ch
Mail: CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland
Christopher B. Browne
Christopher B. Browne <cbb...@io.org> wrote:
>>I agree to some extent... If major applications like a Linux word
>>processor are going to be usable for large projects (>200 page papers, a
>>lot of formatting options, etc.) -- then they cannot be written in TCL
>>or PERL. Why? Speed.
>>
>>Word processors today need to be fairly efficient when it comes to
>>background repagination, spell checking, grammar checking, and
>>reformatting. All this takes a great deal of muscle.
As previously claimed below, it's likely that with a good design
of the data structures, some combination of Perl/Tcl/Tk would give
adequate performance. The things that slow these things down tend
to be *poor design,* and not the languages themselves.
A good idea is to prototype the system once, and then determine where
(in practice) the bad slowdowns are. That will suggest the points
of attack for optimization.
It is *possible* for the interpreter to be at fault; if a bottleneck
turns out to be the communication of information to subprocesses, and
there's no way of optimizing that, then there's an inherent problem.
More on that later.
>>A great example is my current checkbook program: cbb. It uses a Tcl/Tk
>>interface to PERL's dbm database routines. And once I pushed it beyond
>>a couple thousand transactions, it began to slow to a crawl...
>
>Actually, the problem is neither Perl nor Tcl/Tk.
>
>The problem is dbm.
>
>cbb gets slow because it needs to load all of the transactions in
>at once, which, strictly speaking, it *doesn't* need to do.
>c) Typhoon - would require a pretty large driver program in C
> that I don't feel like writing; essentially no Perl interface.
What I feel doesn't matter that much. I've started on this anyways.
The "first cut" of this program is to the stage of being able to add
transactions to a transaction file. (These transactions are neither
validated, nor correct. They do, however, have the correct sorts of
fields in them.)
I've written a "little" program (how annoying that the executible
bloats to about 350K) that can perform a sequence of "commands."
At this point, all that's implemented is the "A" for "Add txn"
command.
Here's just a little optimization info for interest sake:
If I run "tkwiken," adding one transaction on each invocation, and
do this 30 times to make time variances fall, I can add 8.3
transactions per second. (3.617 seconds vs. 30 txns)
If I do the same thing, but add 100 transactions each time, it
takes rather less than 100 times as long. It takes 31.59 seconds
to add 3000 transactions. About 95 transactions per second.
Smart use of *the same tool* improved performance over tenfold.
I'll definitely be running "tkwiken" as a pipeline, running
a bunch of commands through it in any invocation of the CBB
code.
Incidentally, when I just ran the test (moments ago), it was with
about 10000 entries in the data file. (And a set of data files
about 2MB in total size.)
I blew away the data, re-ran, and it took 27.1 seconds to do the 3K
txns. About 10% faster than it was with 10x the data. Looks like
a *good* speed tradeoff.
This will hopefully, some time soon, provide a major speed boost for
those people who have been finding that CBB was slowing down. I'll
note that this doesn't at this point involve significant changes
to the Perl or Tcl/Tk code.
Bogdan Urma
: On Thu, 13 Apr 1995 02:02:12 GMT, Neklan (nek...@euclid.mlnet.com) wrote:
: : That is not quite the case. WP have already released a statically
: : linked version of WP 6.0 for SCO unix. This is able to be run on linux
: : with X.
: Have you actually used this? If so, how does the performance
: compare with say the Windows version? I am just trying to get an idea as
: to how usable the SCO version would be under Linux. What is the list
: price on this (consider all UNIX software is twice or three times a
: DOS/Windows counterpart).?
I've been using it for quite a while now on my 486DX2/66 w/ 16MB RAM
and performance is the same as in Windows speed wise, although it doesn't
seem to crash :) The price is $120 for students, and I think around $300
otherwise. If you're a student you should buy directly from Novell , but
otherwise you're better off with a reseller. Make sure that the reseller has
the new CDs with the static binaries on it.
Bogdan
------
Bogdan Urma
Cornell University
Email: ba...@crux2.cit.cornell.edu
WWW: http://www.ruph.cornell.edu/burma/homepage.html
Bogdan Urma
: >Call me a wimp, but I don't have the time to learn TeX or something else. I
: Probably because you spend too much time playing Doom or Descent :-)
Maybe, but why SHOULD he learn TeX??
: >just want to sit down and in 15 minutes have something nice that prints out so
: >I can make it look like my Pentium and LaserJet can do something other than
: >Courier that looks like my typewriter.
: >
: >And I like WYSIWYG because I don't don't spend all day slaving on stuff, so I
: >don't really know what it'll look like.
: >
: >Also, please include in my dream list: that the application can actually print
: >these nice fonts on my LJ 4 without me having top spend another few hours
: >trying to figure out why ghostscript won't print.
: >
: From what you write, it seems that you want a program that can be used
: without exercising any single brain cell. I'm affraid Unix is not for
: you. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Hmmmm. God forbid Unix should have any easy to use programs! I like
Unix and its internals, but that doesn't mean that every program that
I use under Unix should be complicated and complex to learn. I may spend
time learning about the Unix kernel and programming interface, but I may
not feel like learning nroff or TeX. Am I then not worthy of Unix? I
don't think so.
BTW, I suggest SCO WP 6.0 to the original poster. I use
it all the time.
: Dan
Jason Van Patten
: In <3mpi78$4...@news.primenet.com> "Thumper!" <thu...@interceptor.com> writes:
: >And I like WYSIWYG because I don't don't spend all day slaving on stuff, so I
: >don't really know what it'll look like.
: From what you write, it seems that you want a program that can be used
: without exercising any single brain cell. I'm affraid Unix is not for
: you. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Oh lord... It's this very attitude that frightens people away from
TRYING a Unix operating system. "You shouldn't use it because you don't
want to think. Go 'way son, ya bother me." For crying out loud, have a bit
of respect, would ya?
JUST because the poster wants a program that's easy to use, Unix isn't
for him? Where do you learn your logic? This makes no sense to me. Hell, I
use easy programs on Unix all the time... you're saying that Unix isn't for me
either? Well then, guess I'd better just stop using it.
Get a clue Dan, there are power-users out there that do appreciate a
good operating system. They don't want to be tied down by DOS and Windows
when it comes to getting work done. They'd rather have the robustness and
stability of, say, Unix. At the same time, they'd like to have easy-to-use
applications on that operating system. Separate the Op.Sys. from the apps.
Just because someone wants to use an easy program, doesn't mean that someone
is clueless or brainless, or doesn't want to exercise 'any single brain cell.'
Tell me something... do you ever use Netscape/Mosaic, or hmm.. let's
see... how about XV? I bet you probably have a copy of XV on your Linux box
somewhere... don't ya? Well, by your definition, Unix isn't for you. _I_
certainly consider XV a no-brainer. Don't you?
I've already seen Bogdan's post on this matter, and I back him up on
his suggestion. Get WP 6.0 for SCO. It works.
alves
>From what you write, it seems that you want a program that can be used
>without exercising any single brain cell. I'm affraid Unix is not for
>you. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Perhaps a great deal of thought goes into his writing.
-seth
Sara E Rouner
>>Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
>>TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
>>free, and does just about everything.
>BUT: This is the attitude that will help us lose this non-existant war. I don't
>care how nice TeX is, or how low of an opinion you have of WYSIWYG, but the
>average user is going to want something more along the lines of MS Office than
>TeX.>You can give them an 8 hour lecture and demo on the benefits of TeX, and
>they will still want WordPerfect or some other WYSIWYG system. Accept it.
And as a sysadmin who considers herself a well-seasoned TeX/LaTeX
weenie, and who has to write a lot of reports .. the warm fuzzy
feeling you get with a WYSIWYG interface (i.e. Word) is just too hard
to beat.
I like a system where I can just whip up a memo or status report,
print it, and be off.
-SER
Richard L. Goerwitz
>From what you write, it seems that you want a program that can be used
>without exercising any single brain cell. I'm affraid Unix is not for
>you. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Oh yes, I could not agree more. If you *really* want to get into the
spirit, you have to edit your TeX source with "vi". You see, in the
Unix world the highest level of virtue is always associated with the
most unconvenient and visually unappealing ways of doing things. And
once you've become comfortable with this methodology, you are granted
the privilege of insulting users who dare suggest that there might be
better ways of doing things.
--
Richard L. Goerwitz *** go...@midway.uchicago.edu
Daniel Barlow
go...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>Oh yes, I could not agree more. If you *really* want to get into the
>spirit, you have to edit your TeX source with "vi". You see, in the
Ed, man! man ed. "Ed is the standard editor"
Daniel
--
xu...@csv.warwick.ac.uk // Daniel Barlow // daniel...@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Be warned that typing \fBkillall \fIname\fP may not have the desired
effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged
user. -- Werner Almesberger
Helge Thorsten Kautz
: Aw come on, we don't need any stinking pretty MS Office-like app! Just learn
: TeX/LaTeX and you're set. I think that TeX is better overall. Faster,
: free, and does just about everything.
Well, I don't know. I am about starting to write a Novel (in german
language, since I'm german). Am I - and all fellow writers - supposed to
learn some kind of programming/formatting language in Order to write a book?
Do I have to wreck my brains to figure what command to issue next in order
to get the text formatted the way I want it, instead of breaking some
thoughts about the contents of my story? Can you imagine what impact it has,
when you're using a dumb-terminal to write a story? Writing is art - and
artists need an appropriate environment.
I'd rather type it on an old-fashioned typewriter than, let's say, using vi
and TeX....
Unfortunately, I'm addicted to Linux because of it's unbeaten internet
abilities and, last not least, the multitasking. And because I *am* kinda
hacker, but when I'm writing, I'd like to have my mind free from everything
else but writing. Quite understandable, isn't it?
Helge
--
he...@anykey.gun.de - composer of the famous german folk song "Mein Bade-
zimmer ist ein Feuchtbiotop". What this means? You don't want to know. :)
Hannu Krosing
>super-fast and fully featured, portable word-processing package. Could
>encorperate networking aspects, HTTP editting, source edit, on the fly
^^^^
Do you mean loading/saving documents over HTTP? :)
>print, etc.
Hannu Krosing/ha...@estib.ee
Steve Dunham
: Hmm...this is interesting. Someone actually brought this up. This is cool.
: As it happens Helge, I studied German in high school. It was a royal pain
: switching to the symbols font just to put down the esset. It was rather
: simple with TeX (\beta and you're done!). The umlauts were nicer too.
^^^^^^
that should be \ss. (they are different characters.) I prefer to use
ß instead. (With LaTeX2e you can type your texts in iso-latin-1 - I
have macros that make this work with plain TeX too.)
Steve
dun...@gdl.msu.edu
Albert Cahalan
>> Well, I don't know. I am about starting to write a Novel (in german
>> language, since I'm german). Am I - and all fellow writers - supposed to
>> learn some kind of programming/formatting language in Order to write a
>> book? Do I have to wreck my brains to figure what command to issue next in
>> order to get the text formatted the way I want it, instead of breaking some
I> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I> I think `das ist der Pudels Kern'.
I> I strongly recommend Lamport's slim book on LaTeX just for its
I> (totally nontechnical) preface, to see why this is a bad idea.
>> thoughts about the contents of my story? Can you imagine what impact it
>> has, when you're using a dumb-terminal to write a story? Writing is art -
>> and artists need an appropriate environment.
I> Exactly. If you really want to free your mind for the art of writing, I
I> think that should include freeing it from the art (?) of graphical
I> layout. Which is nowadays more important in word-processors than the
I> content.
Yes, skip TeX also. Just use your favorite editor. I suggest joe, but
you may want emacs, vi, etc. After you finish the whole thing, import
it into any wordprocessor that won't crash. Most Windows wordprocessors
work best with no more than one chapter per file.'/
--
Albert Cahalan
alb...@ccs.neu.edu
Ryan Smith-Roberts
Richard L. Goerwitz <go...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>Raskolnikov <lar...@unm.edu> wrote:
>
>> Clearly, Mr. Goerwitz seems to believe that one cannot edit TeX
>>with TeX. Certainly, it can be done, if that is the way you want to do
>>things. He also seems intent on spreading the rumor that UNIX is for a
>>few, narrow-minded hackers in their ivory towers far away, whereas his
>>more proletarian, insulting interfaces might appease the groaning masses
>>that have been duped into buying such things. Clearly, if Mr. Goerwitz
>>had used UNIX during this decade, he might realize that not only Linux
>>but many other UNIX systems are easier and better(because, yes everybody,
>>some thing are better than others.
>
>Lighten up, man.
don't worry about Raskolnikov, he's become something of the flaming mascot
of comp.os.linux.advocacy. we'd all like him to zip off back to bed and stay
there (you're not alone) but he just comes back, like the Poltergeist.
Tim Smith
>: Ed, man! man ed. "Ed is the standard editor"
>
>You guys are maximalists. In a spirit of Richard G. you should do
>'cat >my_text' and type that in. If you can do 'cat >my_text.dvi'
That's not very minimalist, since it requires a program that is not built
into the shell. At most, you should do this:
while read line
do
echo $line
done > my_text
You can be a little more sophisticated if you want. For example, let's
say you are writing about Linux, and you would like to save some typing
time:
OS='{\\bf Linux}'
while read line;do echo $line; done > my_text <<END
Now type your text, typing $OS wherever you want to mention Linux, and
you'll get {\bf Linux} in your document. End by typing a line containing
just "END".
--Tim Smith
Michal Jaegermann
: In article <D76Mt...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
: go...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
: >Oh yes, I could not agree more. If you *really* want to get into the
: >spirit, you have to edit your TeX source with "vi". You see, in the
: ^^ ?
You guys are maximalists. In a spirit of Richard G. you should do
'cat >my_text' and type that in. If you can do 'cat >my_text.dvi'
immediately then even better. Who needs steenkin' editors. :-)
--mj
Thomas Koenig
article <D75ur...@anykey.gun.de>:
>I'd rather type it on an old-fashioned typewriter than, let's say, using vi
>and TeX....
Well, there certainly are enough easy editors around for Linux,
such as joe or ee.
If what you're writing is a novel, the TeX markup is quite trivial,
and there's not many things which can get in the way of your thought.
You can even do your writing as plain text and add the markup at some
later time; it's no big hassle. With the newer TeX versions, 8-bit
characters also work, so you can go ahead and type in ISO-Latin.
>Unfortunately, I'm addicted to Linux because of it's unbeaten internet
>abilities and, last not least, the multitasking. And because I *am* kinda
>hacker, but when I'm writing, I'd like to have my mind free from everything
>else but writing. Quite understandable, isn't it?
Of course. IMHO, if you want hassle - free typing of large chunks
of text, LaTeX is hard to beat.
--
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.
Ravi Krishna Swamy
All of you guys are counting the price of your computer. Well my
pentium 90, 16 mb ram, Stealth 64 vram, 17" monitor, 1 gb hd cost around
$3800 or so. Linux cost me about $6 if you count the price of floppies.
I actually only have 8 floppies (maybe I should delete those dos/winbloze
floppies) so I borrowed some from a friend. I copied Slackware onto
a bunch of floppies and after 3 trips back and forth to the lab, I had
a, ap, x, xap, d, and n. My CD-ROM drive wasn't supported and still isnt
so buying it on CD was useless to me. It's actually not that bad getting
everything on floppies.
Ravi
--
"You know how dumb the average person is?"
"Well half the people are dumber than that."
DOS + Windoze = dumb half Linux + X = smart half
Ravi K. Swamy http://www2.ncsu.edu/eos/users/r/rkswamy/www/
rks...@eos.ncsu.edu ro...@sdf3.nowhere <- oops, no PPP yet...
Orc
Dan Newcombe <newc...@aa.csc.peachnet.edu> wrote:
>In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.95041...@bryan.seanet.com>,
> Bryan Phillippe <ad...@bryan.seanet.com> wrote:
>>corporations like Micro$oft. That is why I use Linux; the cost of my
>>system (Zero dollars && Zero cents) in corporate world would be
>
>Bull! Linux is very expensive. Lets see:
Naa. If you're going to put Unix on a machine, you'll be doing
the hardware upgrades anyway -- you're just not spending the
additional $99 for Unixware(*), Sunos, or whatever other port of
Unix is floating around.
____
david parsons \bi/ About US$9000 by now.
\/
(* this is assuming that third-party utilities can be found to
replace all the stuff that's not bundled with Unixware.)
Thomas F Brown
>In most of their applications, GUIs are primarily a tool that enables
>capitalists to exploit cheap, dispensable, unskilled labour - The GUI
>Manifesto
Not so sure. I just got a job where I thought I was going to
have slog through learning Foxpro in order to merge some
databases they have in that format. Then I remembered the
"join" command on my unix box, did the job in about
2 seconds. Since I'm paid by the hour, perhaps
letting them pay me to learn Foxpro would have been the
better move (but way too boring). Here I am participating
in my own expoitation.
Christopher Wiles
> Have you actually used this? If so, how does the performance
> compare with say the Windows version? I am just trying to get an idea as
> to how usable the SCO version would be under Linux. What is the list
> price on this (consider all UNIX software is twice or three times a
> DOS/Windows counterpart).?
I'm running the WP6.0/SCO demo on a 486DX2/80, 8 MB, X11R6.
Performance is at least on a par with the Windows version (in fact, it
appears to be the ONLY X program I have that can be termed quick).
The literature quotes a price of $499 (I'm ballparking, I'm not at home
right now) -- I'm seriously considering purchase, and definitely will if
a student discount is available.
-- Chris (wil...@moscow.com) PGP mail preferred -- Finger for PGP public key
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