Thread View: comp.editors
9 messages
9 total messages
Started by Ilya
Tue, 21 May 1996 00:00
Better editors
Author: Ilya
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 00:00
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 00:00
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Steve Withers (sbwwgtn@ibm.net) wrote: |In <Dr4uyH.2so@postfix.cimpact.nl>, bo@postfix.cimpact.nl (Mailhost Master) writes: > I can see it now, the night before that final paper is due, the one that > needs the graphs and charts, italicizion and bold fonts. What do you do? > Microsoft Word? No. WordPerfect? No. PageMaker? No. You whip > out... vi and LaTeX!!!!! yeah right. You are being sarcastic, right? That is what I do. Vi and nroff or vim and latex or emacs and nroff. Cool stuff. |>[flame on] Oh man, I am so scared now. I better run for my life. (...) |>: >It's time Unix machines moved into the modern age of word processors. |> |>If you run ANY of those so-called "modern age" wordprocessors on |>anything less than a fucking P160, changing a font from "normal" to |>"bold" takes forever. And it won't get any better because all those |>programs are derived from earlier versions simply by adding more sloppy |>code to an already sloppy program. You'll end up with a 1Gb |>wordprocessor that eats ALL your resources while doing NOTHING. Even |>Emacs will laugh at it. Your modern age is 20 years behind Unix. *nod* Thank you for the post, my invisible cyberspace friend. A couple of weeks ago I decided to compose my resume. I went to our Macintosh computer lab, started Word Perfect or another word processor they have on there, forget which. Wanted to make certain words bold and/or underlined. It took me ten minutes to figure out how. No, I am not stupid, but Word Perfect is not a user friendly program and I have not used it for a long time anyway. Typed in the resume. Tried to save in on the floppy disk and froze the machine. Rebooted it. Got frustrated, gave up and went to the Unix lab, fired up emacs and my mind was like "Aahhh". Pure editing satisfaction. Retyped the resume in about five minutes, formatted the file with nroff and was done. Unix computers do not freeze like Machintoshes. They do a lot of bad things, they crash, but they have never stolen my resume from me. I am not an experienced Macintosh user but then Macs are not designed for experienced users and do not have a steep learning curve. I have seen people "freeze" Macs and I have done it myself a few times over the years. Some of these problems occured entirely because of my errors and some were not. A computer or a software package that freezes for whatever reason is absolutely unacceptable. This is the reason I despise Macs among many other things in life. I was upset that day I lost my resume and 20 mitutes of my life. Little things like that terribly frustrate and upset me, albeit for short periods of time. I still use Macs sometimes just because they are different from what I am used to. They are fine, high-quality machines and when they perform as they should and do not disappoint me, they are great. Eventually I retyped the resume with Word on a Mac and it decided to be nice to me and did not "freeze". I suppose I should thank the computer for it. If our Unix lab had a laser printer like the Mac lab, I would certainly do it in emacs on a Sun worstation because it is the best combination I have ever encountered. Why I am posting this? I dunno. You figure it out. ========================================================================== Ilya Beloozerov Email: ibelooze@runet.edu Public PGP key is available at http://www.cs.runet.edu/~ibelooze This message is sponsored by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ==========================================================================
Re: Better editors
Author: Matt
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
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: |>If you run ANY of those so-called "modern age" wordprocessors on
: |>anything less than a fucking P160, changing a font from "normal" to
: |>"bold" takes forever. And it won't get any better because all those
: |>programs are derived from earlier versions simply by adding more sloppy
: |>code to an already sloppy program. You'll end up with a 1Gb
: |>wordprocessor that eats ALL your resources while doing NOTHING. Even
: |>Emacs will laugh at it. Your modern age is 20 years behind Unix.
Hehe, too true. Give me that p160, a unix OS to run on it, vi, tex and
20 terminals, and 20 ppl will be laying out documents, 20 times as fast,
1/20th the cost.
--
Matt(hew) Jenkins. 2nd yr. Computer Science (RMIT Bundoora)
email: mdj@{arcadia|yallara}.cs.rmit.edu.au
Running DOS 6.2, Linux 1.2.8 on a 486/100/12/540
I like: Toranas, Beer, and Surfing the Net.
Re: Better editors
Author: Charles Bouldin
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
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In article <4nv72n$cku@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>, mdj@arcadia.cs.rmit.edu.au (Matt) wrote: > : |>If you run ANY of those so-called "modern age" wordprocessors on > : |>anything less than a fucking P160, changing a font from "normal" to > : |>"bold" takes forever. And it won't get any better because all those > : |>programs are derived from earlier versions simply by adding more sloppy > : |>code to an already sloppy program. You'll end up with a 1Gb > : |>wordprocessor that eats ALL your resources while doing NOTHING. Even > : |>Emacs will laugh at it. Your modern age is 20 years behind Unix. > > Hehe, too true. Give me that p160, a unix OS to run on it, vi, tex and > 20 terminals, and 20 ppl will be laying out documents, 20 times as fast, > 1/20th the cost. Well, you don't have to run Unix to have a nice TeX environment. Textures on the Macintosh is, IMHO, the best TeX ever made. It *is* kinda bizarre to use a Mac and TeX...most of the people I know who use Macs think it is very strange! But, the quality of the output, the superb portability of the documents and the industrial strength capabilities make it worthwhile. I used to (circa 1987) have people go into shock when they saw that my full Textures install was about 6 megs, mostly fonts. Then Word 3(?) took a lot less space. Now Textures still takes 6-8 megs, whilst Word or WordPerfect can easily destroy 25-30 megs of disc space. Textures also runs in considerably less memory! The strange thing is that TeX, just by remaining true to its origins, has managed to become the "lean and mean" alternative to the megabloat wordprocessors that are now served up to the public. This is especially strange since I remember when TeX was only considered suitable for "mainframes"!!
Re: Better editors
Author: Shawn V. Hernan
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
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In article <4nrqg2$eek@newslink.runet.edu>, ibelooze@runet.edu (Ilya) wrote: >like Machintoshes. Cool. A new name for machines running MkLinux! Shawn -- Shawn V Hernan The University of Pittsburgh Systems and Networks 412-624-6425 svh+@pitt.edu
Re: Better editors
Author: Shawn V. Hernan
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 00:00
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In article <4nv72n$cku@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>, mdj@arcadia.cs.rmit.edu.au (Matt) wrote: > > Hehe, too true. Give me that p160, a unix OS to run on it, vi, tex and > 20 terminals, and 20 ppl will be laying out documents, 20 times as fast, > 1/20th the cost. You obviously haven't looked at the cost breakdowns for a typical organization. Computers are cheap. Its *people* that are expensive. 20 people will cost much more than any of the common desktop computers. Shawn -- Shawn V Hernan The University of Pittsburgh Systems and Networks 412-624-6425 svh+@pitt.edu
Re: Better editors
Author: Barry A. Warsaw
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 00:00
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 00:00
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>> like Machintoshes.
SVH> Cool. A new name for machines running MkLinux!
Are we going to have to call them Macgnutoshes now? :-)
Re: Better editors
Author: Ilya
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
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Shawn V. Hernan (svh+@pitt.edu) wrote: |In article <4nrqg2$eek@newslink.runet.edu>, ibelooze@runet.edu (Ilya) wrote: | |>like Machintoshes. | | |Cool. A new name for machines running MkLinux! Ah... very funny, sir. ========================================================================== Ilya Beloozerov Email: ibelooze@runet.edu Public PGP key is available at http://www.cs.runet.edu/~ibelooze This message is sponsored by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ==========================================================================
Re: Better editors
Author: William Perry
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
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bwarsaw@cnri.reston.va.us (Barry A. Warsaw) writes: > > > >> like Machintoshes. > > SVH> Cool. A new name for machines running MkLinux! > > Are we going to have to call them Macgnutoshes now? :-) How dare you slight the other contributors! MachLiGNUXFreeTeXoshes! perhaps we need to have: echo "Welcome to Lignu" >| /etc/issue for x in /var/adm/packages/* do echo $x >> /etc/issue done echo "x " >> /etc/issue uname -r >> /etc/issue in all distributions from now on? :) -Bill P.
Re: Better editors
Author: Georg Wiegand
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:00
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Hello!
>>>>> In article <svh+-2205961454470001@usenet.pitt.edu>
>>>>> �svh+@pitt.edu (Shawn V. Hernan)� wrote:
>
>In article <4nv72n$cku@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>, mdj@arcadia.cs.rmit.edu.au
>(Matt) wrote:
>
>>
>> Hehe, too true. Give me that p160, a unix OS to run on it, vi, tex and
>> 20 terminals, and 20 ppl will be laying out documents, 20 times as fast,
>> 1/20th the cost.
>
>
>You obviously haven't looked at the cost breakdowns for a typical
>organization. Computers are cheap. Its *people* that are expensive. 20
>people will cost much more than any of the common desktop computers.
(1) Word for 20 users is expensive, while TeX for 1-1000++ users
doesn't cost anything.
(2) You would work faster with TeX than with Word, so 20 p./TeX are
faster than 20 p./Word.
Ciao, George
--
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."
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