🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <HFqJ616w164w@mantis.co.uk>,
mathew@mantis.co.uk (Industrial Poet) writes: 
> pld@whopper.lcs.mit.edu (Peter L. DeWolf) writes:
>>   Now, you've just announced that you are going to carry on RMS's
>> tradition of "Let us Withhold Information from the ENEMIES of the One True
>> Way of Free Software and PUNISH those Evil Benighted Users of the machines
>> of the Powerful Evil Empire of AT&T, Apple, etc. for having the GALL to
>> actually Support the Damned Companies by OWNING and trying to USE their
>> computers.  May they be DAMNED to PERDITION for making this Mistake!  Let
>> the WRATH of the FSF and LPF be on their heads, so help us RMS!"
> 
> I think you misunderstand.  Nobody's suggesting punishing Apple for being
> enemies of free software.
> 
> What Apple are doing which is wrong is telling me what I may or may not
> write.  They are threatening people with user interface copyright lawsuits.
> They are telling me that I may not use an icon of a trash can on any desktop
> program I write.  They are telling me that I may not use pull-down menus. 
> They are telling me that I may not have multiple overlapping windows with
> icons to represent files.
> 

Since we've worked our way to the monthly Apple-bash, let me just state a point
of view that I personally have not yet seen here. 
There are some of us who are computer literate, enjoy learning about OS design,
like to hop from one machine to another, and yet still support Apple. 
The reason is that Apple have some sort of vision of elegance and beauty that
appeals to us and that just isn't present anywhere else in the computer 
world. It is Apple that has this marvelous idea of resources that keep all
the gunk about preferences and such in one file instead of scads of .files.
It is Apple that have sytem software that, if used properly, will allow
your code to display it's text correctly in Japanese or Arabic as well as
English- without you caring about right to left writing, or 16 bit chars. 
It is Apple that handle contention for the limited colors available in 
a 4 or 8 bit graphics environment in a way that works well for the user,
yet is easy to program. 

It is Apple that have auto-repeat that doesn't go off without you seeing what
it's doing (although you do have type-ahead.) It is Apple that have links that
still point to the correct file even if that file is moved or has it's name
changed. Apple that give away their system software (you can anonymous FTP it)
so that programmers can use the latest system calls and not have to worry too
much about supporting old systems. Apple that print easily readable, cheap OS
manuals, that have decent function names.

Based on Microsoft's performance in other places, I don't think Windows 3 would
be much better than it's present abyssmal self, even if there were no Apple
lawsuit- just compare Word or Excel to the competition to see that. They are
very powerful products- but their interfaces just don't sparkle.
Look at UNIX. Every year it gains another few meg, and no-one is going through
it saying lets cut the crap and have one grep, not three. Lets have one file
viewing utility that handles text, hex dumps, object files etc. 

Maybe Next will become a company where elegance counts- they've so far done a
hell of a lot more good things in their three years than MS or IBM or any UNIX
company, but for the moment, I'm afraid, I will continue to support Apple
because I care a lot about beauty and elegance, and Apple are the only company
around keeping the faith.

Maynard Handley