Re: [tlug] furigana...openoffice?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Lyle" == Lyle Saxon <ronfaxon@example.com> writes:

    Lyle> Automation is not (always) the root of all evil!

Who's objecting to automation?  Not me!  I objected to WYSIWYG that
(in my experience, anyway) gets in the way of all automation that is
higher-order than the WYSIWYG application itself.

    Lyle> I agree that doing it all by hand is best - *if* you have
    Lyle> the time.

It's not a question of doing more by hand than you have to.

The issue here is do you trust your tools?  WYSIWYG is basically the
Pointy Haired Boss approach to automation: digitized manual labor that
requires no thought or training in the simple case (same as
reStructuredText, see example below), while inhibiting acquisition of
any skill outside the job description (opposite of reStructuredText,
which produces straightforward HTML and LaTeX that is all of
structured, editable by humans, and parsable by 3rd-party
applications).  Here's what it is supposed to look like, make it look
like that on-screen, bear no responsibility if the app screws up.

I demand automation, but I don't need WYSIWYG because I trust my tools
to do exactly what I want based on what I tell them to do 95% of the
time, and 95% of the remainder it's not worth fixing.  In fact, often
enough I discover that "you can't always get what you want, but if you
try sometime, you get what you need".

    Lyle> (Yes, there are glitches, but under some circumstances, it
    Lyle> saves time.)

I've never actually seen WYSIWYG save time in a situation where
automation is appropriate.  Of course it saves time if you're
producing a one-of-a-kind object (aka work of art), but that is the
opposite of automation.

In a context that requires automation, it is possible to work around
the defects of WYSIWYG, as "modern" browsers that automatically open
all viruses^Wforeign format files with appropriate infection
vectors^W^Wapplications prove---but as the "inoperative" words
demonstrate, that has its costs, too.

It's true that because WYSIWYG applications have become ubiquitous,
using their UIs saves time for brainwashed users.  That's acceptable in
the short run, but surely worth our while in both human and economic
terms to change in the long run.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.