Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 20:19:53 +1100 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> Cc: FreeBSD-chat <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, Ken Keeler <kkeysler@nwlink.com> Subject: Re: Smaller, Dedicated tools and Greg's Daemon News Article Message-ID: <19981214201953.52678@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812132318160.6577-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>; from Jason C. Wells on Sun, Dec 13, 1998 at 11:29:40PM -0800 References: <19981214083023.C2587@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812132318160.6577-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>
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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*-
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