RE: Something I would like to see

[Warren Chartier <icebalm@bigfoot.com>]

On Mon, 1 May 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> What's wrong with emacs?  I don't touch the command line for any of my
> editing and validation stuff.  Anybody running with a major distribution
> should be able to get emacs, and the setup for psgmls is relatively trivial.

Emacs is one hideous beast of an editor, it defines exactly why editors
such as "pico" exist.  Emacs may be powerful, but its a dreadful editor to
learn and use for people who just want to write a howto, and nothing
else.  This is the year 2000, emacs should be a helluva lot more "user
friendly" by now, but it isn't.

> Just one key series in emacs.  I'm sure it's similar for vi.  I'm sure that
> somebody has made a GUI frontend to ispell where you can just drop your
> document and get it spellchecked (if not, somebody go do that right now :).

New people learning Linux right this very moment 1. Probably won't ever
learn how to use emacs or vi, 2. Probably won't ever want to learn how to
use emacs or vi.
 
> I agree that we should "dumb some stuff down", but I don't think that moving
> away from SGML/XML is the answer.  I think that we just need better
> documentation, and perhaps better help for people who are intimidated by
> SGML, or by DocBook.  I know that at least one of my favorite authors is a
> little worried about the proposition of moving to DocBook, and until we can
> make them comfortable, we've got a LOT of work to do.  

Then we need a real, easy to use GUI editor for SGML-DocBook, and until
that happens, the LDP will grow at a stunted rate.  Better documentation
is a bandaid fix for a tidal wave problem.

I refuse to learn how to use emacs and vi, I have no need for them and am
not going to do it just to write a HOWTO. The editors, while powerful, are
seriously out of date with current user interface practices.

Warren Chartier
GTKali, a graphical Kali client for Linux - http://gtkali.sourceforge.net
Minister of the Mobile Mechanized Infantry - http://www.juga.com
Fight Spam - Join CAUSE!  http://www.cause.org

---- BEGIN ECHELON BLOCK ----
SCUD missile Ortega AK-47 Uzi $400 million in gold bullion Rule Psix Nazi
militia Project Monarch counter-intelligence JFK cypherpunk Kibo Ron Brown
clones bomb special-ops terrorism WACO nuclear missile MI5
----- END ECHELON BLOCK -----


--  
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org