Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 11:12:25 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, "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: <19981215111225.O17075@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <19981214201953.52678@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Mon, Dec 14, 1998 at 08:19:53PM %2B1100 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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On Monday, 14 December 1998 at 20:19:53 +1100, 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. [Illustrative story omitted] No, you don't understand. Well, I suspect you do understand, but you're pretending not to. The article in question was not about programming, it was about control. You have wrested control in the manner I was advocating. If you had needed a little program (never played with PERL?), you could have written one to play around with your RTF stuff, and you probably would have. The thing is that the *ability* to program is part of your control. I think I'll add this story to the followup in the next Dæmon's advocate article. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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