Text File

Aucbvax.2411 fa.works utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Thu Jul 23 01:51:19 1981 Various subspecies >From Joe.Newcomer@CMU-10A Thu Jul 23 00:21:22 1981 Actually, the dangerous subspecies is the person who builds a system which cannot be easily extended by other than wizards, or used unless dozens of obscure interactions are understood. I plead guilty to belonging to this group, having built a couple examples when I was young and foolish (the only current change in state is that I am somewhat older...). However, I also recognize this is a totally losing way of building systems. For example, I cannot extend EMACS without learning TECO, and I haven't time or inclination (I also don't plan to read hex dumps from the VAX. I know as little of the PERQ p-codes as I can get away with). What we REALLY need is clean, understandable way to specify extensions to systems; for example MockLisp in VAX Unix EMACS is infinitely superior to TECO as an algorithmic language. Scribe is far better than most text formatting languages, and non-technical people can learn enough to build custom Scribe formats. The "picture" format in my BH program started out as a high-level concept for specifying what output should look like, but I quickly found out that the power of the language was inadequate. The syntax remained, the power increased, and it is about as humane as TECO right now. I hope to rewrite it into a Scribe-like notation, but that is a project for another year.

Brian Reid once claimed that one of the triumphs of Scribe was that it "made it possible for secretaries and senior faculty to use that vile device, the XGP". This was not meant as a slur on either group; rather, it pointed out that most people don't want to learn an infinite amount of trash just to get their work done. The two groups named usually don't have the time of graduate students, hackers, and nurds to worry about details such as the two-line XGP font-load delay our system had. I find that I have less and less time to worry about, say, how to make CR in EMACS behave like LF and how to stop LF from behaving differently if the previous line started at the left margin. I know what effect I want; I don't want to know about 37 different variables, TECO FS-flags, and other crap to get a simple change in behavior. This is a lot of what is involved in getting really good personal workstations; if I have to remember dozens of incantations to, say, set up defaults when I boot, I'm not going to be very happy.

joe

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.