Re: [tlug] The Great Mistake is thinking OOo is different [was: Why Vista Sucks]

[tlug@example.com]

On Saturday 12 April 2008 13:55:24 SL Baur wrote:
> I'm guessing that you're very young.  So, let's go back into history a
> bit, shall we?

Thank you for your story! :)

> (mainly secretaries with High School education and at best "Business"
> degrees) document preparation with vi(1) and LaTeX(1) on BSD 4.2
> Unix.  Guess what?  It was *working*.

Wow, that is very surprising and interesting!  I thought that secretaries of 
that time used typewriters and generally disliked word processors (the 
hardware kind) and computers.  Was such a thing widespread, or did you just 
happen to know a very interesting group of secretaries? ;)

> In our first session in the college computer labs (Microsoft Something,
> defintely Microsoft Word), I watched my younger team mates fiddle with
> on-screen formatting for about as long as it took me to learn troff from
> manuals and type in a resume with ed(1) *before* we had any content put into
> our paper.  That's progress? 

I see your point, but I wonder if the results would have been different if the 
person (skill level) was held constant.  If, back in April 1981, you had been 
given the task of typing your resume into a Microsoft Something system from 
the future, I wonder how the time requirements would have compared to those 
of the troff method.

Is the dumbing down of tools the primary cause of the dumbing down of people?

> Suffice to say that Microsoft Word has all the flexibility of a granite
> cliff when it comes to resizing documents. 

I occasionally receive resumes in DOC format.  (My initial instinct is to not 
consider candidates who send Microsoft format resumes, but my colleagues 
think that is a bit harsh.)  I get particularly annoyed when such documents 
are in U.S. Letter format, which happens surprisingly often.  Resizing the 
document to a standard paper size often results in very poor looking 
documents, especially when the document contains tables!

Systems such as LaTeX have much better support for the resizing of documents, 
but the truth is that many people insert special commands to optimize the 
layout of text according to where it appears on the page, and such 
special-case commands do not play well with document resizing either.

> You have missed article after article in the 1980s about WYSINWG.  The
> basic arguments are still true.  The closest to come to that is Adobe and
> their PDF format.  I'll let you speculate why PDF documents printed on dead
> trees look different from how they appear when sprayed from an electron
> gun.

To me, and I know that this is not universal, formats such as PS and PDF are 
what I think of as "output formats."  PDF is a dual purpose format that tries 
to support two very different uses: portability for transmission and display 
on a screen as well as printability.  Perhaps it is trying to be bridge to 
the paperless office era, but it clearly has its deficiencies, as most 
all-in-one formats do.

> But hey, if you wish to ignore history, that's your business.  But DO NOT
> malign those of us, and I mean Steve-san here, who know better.

I respect Steve-san's opinions as well as your own, though I do not agree with 
all of them.

> WSYiWYG is easily the most productivity pessimiser ever invented.

There are many who would say the same thing about computers in general.

> (A close 2nd and 3rd are the one and two button mice, but I do not expect
> you to understand that).

I have used a three button mouse since I first started using computers, and I 
prefer using them over ones with one or two buttons (not to mention mouse 
wheels).  Though I spend the vast majority of my computer time using vi and 
have little need for mouse buttons, I also work on graphics projects.  Three 
buttons are very useful in 3d graphics, as each button can be associated with 
a different dimension.  (For example, holding down two buttons can constrain 
cursor movement to a plane.)  Multiple mouse buttons are also useful in the 
implementation of context menus, of course, but they are not the only way.

Though I tend to dislike one button mice myself, I recognize their purpose for 
other people.  I built my grandmother a computer so that she could easily 
communicate with me while I am in Japan, and the mouse was a very unnatural 
thing for her.  Two buttons and a scroll wheel was a constant cause of 
confusion.  When Mac Minis came out, I replaced her computer with one of 
those, and she much preferred the simple mouse.

Cheers,

Travis