Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:32:09 -0500 From: Malartre <malartre@aei.ca> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>, FreeBSD-chat <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, Ken Keeler <kkeysler@nwlink.com> Subject: Re: Smaller, Dedicated tools and Greg's Daemon News Article Message-ID: <367583D9.1428837B@aei.ca> References: <19981214083023.C2587@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812132318160.6577-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> <19981214201953.52678@welearn.com.au>
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Sue Blake wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 13, 1998 at 11:29:40PM -0800, Jason C. Wells wrote: > > I spent the entire weekend doing battle with Microsoft products. We > > produced a 400 page report using the bastard Word 97. Easily 20 full man > > hours were spent trying to figure why there were big red X's where > > pictures used to be and recovering files that were corrupted during > > crashes. We could not put together more than 20MB/200 pages of text before > > complete instability occured. > > > > What a horrible waste of time. > > > > Oh yeah, don't forget that little paper clip sucker in the right corner. > > Good thing I didn't have my gun. I'da shot the futhermocker right in his > > litte winky eye. > > > > Imagine trying to put together "The Complete FreeBSD" in this environment. > > > > The point is, I know how well small dedicated tools work. I haven't > > learned the text editing tools because I was never motivated to do so. > > > > A recent email chat combined with Greg's article have completely convinced > > me that I should learn a little bit more programming in order to make my > > life easier. > > > > Emacs, Tex, here I come! > > Greg will scowl from his perch, but even the simplest programming is > beyond me at the moment. There are other ways, though. First a tale of > woe. > > About three years ago I was asked to edit and prepare a large highly > structured document in Word, which was to be saved in various formats > (word processors on different platforms, HTML, PDF) for distribution on > CD mainly to mac users. > > The microsoft addicts with the money naturally wanted to be able to > maintain it on their own if I disappear, and the only thing they do > with computers is Word. The last additions were about to arrive, and > the preparation for the CD was due to be complete in 2 weeks, so they > paid me in advance. > > NEVER take money in advance!! After years of a few new words here and > there every couple of months, during which time I swore off mickeysoft > except for a small partition for this job, the final changes came > through last week. The final final changes, they insist. I insist too. > > To boot NT, apart from losing the use of my best machine, I have to get > into the CMOS and hide some disks. Boring. So a while ago I saved the > damn thing as RTF, extracted the common ground from a bunch of > different RTF specs and word processor interpretations of them, cleaned > the RTF code of redundancies (greatly reducing the file size and > increasing platform independence) and dragged it onto my 386. There I'm > maintaining it with ed, sed, joe, and rcs. Ispell conveniently ignores > the RTF bits if you tell it it's TeX. Now when they reckon a prior > change has been lost or unapproved I can trace it back. I still have to > go into NT one more time to produce the word-processor-native versions > and build a fancy PDF with links and notes, but then it'll be over. > > Meanwhile the RTF file is always available to them by ftp even as I > work on it, they can use it without any conversion on their win and mac > machines, and I get to use tools that are so efficient that they don't > even interfere with the web/ftp/mail/dns/etc that the 386 is serving at > the same time. (By contrast, the office had to upgrade their 486s ages > ago when they couldn't cope with Win3.1/Word6) I've been able to use a > text editor to write letters in RTF on their behalf, email them to the > mac office for printing and posting and to the win head office for > approval and archiving. > > It's not about programming at all. It's about cutting through the > bullshit to find the most sensible approach while respecting the more > restricted choices of others. And if you treat it as religion you'll > always risk being half blind to the possibilities. Religions restrict > the mind and destroy those who want to consider other options. > > If programming is your tool, great, but there's plenty of scope for the > non-programmers here too. Similarly, there's a lot of people out there > who don't want to know about computers and shouldn't have to just to > type a document or look at a web page. Unlike the commercial > monopolies, I believe there's room for all of us if only we can rise > above the gut reactions of preaching and running scared. > > -- > > Regards, > -*Sue*- Huh, I'm probably wrong, but someone said to me that RTF was a standard once develloped by Microsoft. Anyway.. -- [Malartre][malartre@aei.ca][http://www.lowrent.org/freebsd/malartre/] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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