[plug] ``not yet insane'' and word processing

[Leon Brooks]

The Thought Assassin wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, tlee wrote:
> I can work with computers every day and am not yet insane.

Are you sure? (-:

>> Usually the hardest way works out to be the quickest way - rather like a
>> mechanic in engine of your car. He does not walk around to the seat to
>> start the engine - simply shorts out the starter motor and the engine
>> bursts into life.

> The equivalent for a sysadmin is probably telnetting into a box from miles
> away instead of having to drive over to where it is to configure/fix it.

SecureSHelling, please!

>> Vi and Emacs will accomplish tasks without the added comlication of a
>> word processor editor. But I don't suppose they are much good for word
>> processing and the like? What say?

> Don't know. I don't do word processing.

Actually, Greg, you do. What you do with LaTeX is word processing. What your
average receptionist does with WordPerfect is WYSIWYG editing. You let the
computer work out where to put things, senorita receptionist has to do it
herself.

> When I am composing large
> documents, I use the LaTeX text processing and typesetting system for
> reasons very similar to the reasons I give above for using Linux. It does
> what I tell it to and stays out of my way. I have complete control because
> I feed into LaTex plain ASCII files describing the output I want, and it
> determines how to display what I have writen on the page in agrement with
> standard typesetting procedures. I edit the input files in vim.

> If one wants a word processor, I have heard good things about the
> Staroffice and Koffice ones, and that AbiWord will provide a nice modular
> lightweight system once it has been polished up a bit. I wouldn't go for
> anything that is not open source, since you don't know what havoc may be
> wreaked on it in the future.

Yes, you do. Microsoft will buy it and close it down. )-:

-- 
Five years ago I was on a flight from Vegas to Dallas.  The pilot
said, "Those of you on the right side of the plane can look down
and see Meteor Crater.  One of our flight attendants saw it for
the first time last week, and said 'Wow, it almost hit that road!'"