On Thu, Sep 14, 2000 at 11:46:18PM +1100, Jason Stokes wrote:
> > Those misguided people complaining about Info format should type C-h i h
> > in Emacs (I was going to say start Emacs first, but you all run Emacs
> > already, right? :) and work through the tutorial and learn to use it
> > and to love it.
>
> Fortunately I'm completely immune to "macho techy" syndrome, and if
> I find something difficult and hard to understand I'm not afraid to
> say it.
why don't you just fix it, then - instead of whining?
it certainly wouldn't be hard to change the text of an error message.
or do you think its someone else's responsibility to fix your problems
with a piece of useful software they gave you for free?
> I will only note that the standard Unix-style "info" hypertext
> documentation browser, with its plain-text appearance and keyboard
> browsing commands pales dramatically compared with the point and
> click world-wide web -- a tool even geeks have been known to use
> quite effectively, without any complaints that it should be made
> harder to use.
don't bag something you obviously haven't used.
in xemacs i can certainly point and click on info hyperlinks. i
believe standard emacs also lets you do this(?).
tkinfo is a stand alone tool that incorporates *many* gui features.
there's even info2html.cgi if you believe that everything seen through
a web browser is automatically easier to use.
"the web" is an interface, not a format (fool).
info documents can also be printed as very useful (and not
unattractive) books. you can buy several books from FSF, which are
simply the printed {emacs,gdb,make,etc} info pages.
web pages suck majorly when printed.
> How much time is spent dealing with the accidental complexity of
> tools like "Make", with its bizarre syntax and (in the case of
> recursive makefiles) impossible to follow recursive behaviour,
> instead of working on actual problems?
then don't use make. there's plenty of other dependency tools around
("cook" being one i particularly like).
hey, you could even do it with a shell script if you don't like the
complexity of having another tool do the hard work for you..
> It's not like people haven't realized this. The "software capentry"
> project is one attempt to reduce such problems -- on the agenda is
> an easier to use replacement for "Make".
which is going to be so very useful, when the next python license
turns out to be incompatible with the GPL.. (see license for python
1.6) [insert anti- python / commercially sponsored competitions
bigotry here]
there are already several replacements for make. i can think of 4 or
so, without even looking. yet another will really improve *my* quality
of life. how far did *you* look?
--
- Gus.not.nearly.harsh.enough
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