RE: [tlug] epcEditor

[Jim Breen <jwb@example.com>]

[Charles Muller (RE: [tlug] epcEditor) writes:]
>> 
ST > Emacs already has a validating SGML editor, so don't expect me to do
>> 
>> There is really a wide gap in terms of perception here, in the issue I am
>> trying to address, and I realize now that TLUG was probably not a good place
>> to make this announcement. But it was precisely my inability figure out how
>> to get Emacs set up to do the things I wanted (most fundamental of which was
>> to properly handle CJK in UTF-8) that pushed me to search for a more
>> user-friendly option.

Understood. Emacs is surely a wondrous thing (either that, or there has
been mass hallucination among otherwise intelligent people), but it's
like Reverse-Polish Notation - elegant and precise, but incomprehensible
if you don't make the time and commitment to immersing yourself in it.

>> I've heard again and again from my more technically-capable colleagues about
>> the wonders of Emacs. 

I have too, repeatedly. I have even made a a few tentative forays in its
direction, only to driven back by a myriad of non-intuitive keystrokes.
I decided life was too short, and my time would be better spent on
something easier, like trying to learn to speak Japanese.

>> But the fact is, as I see it from the lower end of
>> technical skill, unless some people begin to provide some easily usable
>> applications like the one I introduced yesterday, Linux will continue to
>> remain a platform limited in its usage to a small coterie of  IT
>> professionals and skilled hackers, forever being off-limits to the more
>> average end-user like myself, who would have to stay with locked in the
>> Redmond prison.

The success of Linux in the wider marketplace will have nothing to do
with Emacs. If anything it will be despite Emacs.

>> And the more time I spend on Linux lists, the more I believe that this is
>> precisely the way that most veteran Linuxers would prefer it.

Ah, there are a lot of us old vi people around; we're just older and
wiser. Besides who'd ever get up missionary zeal over vi. I liken it to
the Sunni and Shi'ite schism in Unixdom. Watch out for them
fundamentalists.

No, Linux will "succeed" in the wider marketplace when there is a bullet
and foolproof installation and a solid set of usable software. "Usable"
meaning free of command-line and control-key arcana.

Cheers

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen  [j.breen@example.com  http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/]
Computer Science & Software Engineering,                Tel: +61 3 9905 3298
P.O Box 26, Monash University,                          Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
Clayton VIC 3800, Australia      ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学