🚀 go-pugleaf

joshi@cs.uiuc.edu (Anil Joshi) writes:
^
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v
>May be you used the older version. IBM keeps on making improvements in a
>systematic way and documents everything. There is strict QC and you can
>be more or less assured about its reliability.
Agreed!

>What do vi and emacs
>have to offer in this area? Am I wrong in assuming that
>they have been basically developed by some grad. students?
Yes!

>I also have a
>feeling that some of the computer science hacks are too caught up in
>their own little hacking tricks like named pipes or whatever and
>sneer at the users. Do you think that they would care too much about the
>poor typist/sceretary who has to use these tools? Now, on the otherhand,
>if they were to make money, they would put everything they have got into
>it. The popularity of emacs arises from it being a free-bee package than
>anything else. If one was paying some good $s for it, one would demand
>more. IBM sells ISPF for real $s and they spend enough money on
>research and continually improve their products. This is true with any
>company (be it Apple or DEC etc.).

I think that this is a little unfair - GNU Emacs is produced by the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) - No there are no guarantees, but then as it
is distributed free it really isn't possible to give any for economic reasons.

Yes, I do believe that Richard Stallman et al DO care about their end user,
but it is worth remembering that the end user intended for Emacs (and indeed
Vi) is a PROGRAMMER - not a typist.

FSF do put 'everything they have got' into the GNU tools that they produce,
because that is basically all that they do - The low number of problems 
reported over USENET seem imply that FSF do have a working quality assurance
policy (although I personally doubt whether it is as formal as all that).

Just a few thoughts!

Eoin.
PS - As Peter Da Silva said in a few postings back - Why not write a PD
     editor that is focused towards typists/end users rather than programmers.
     FSF are you listening?? :-)
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~    Eoin Woods, Software Development Group, Bull HN Information Systems,   ~
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