A little musing on Linux ( was Re: Zip files to multiple floppies)

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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It would appear that on Jun 3, Parameshwara Bhat did say:

> That's greatly assuring.I think my initial not-so-nice experiences with
> various distributions Of linux have made me think a little harsh about the
> attitudes.As I said elsewhere on the list,security and other aspects for
> desktop installations should not be on the same footing as for a server.Also
> command line mentality still rules the roost.While granting their power,it is
> really a distraction for a guy like me twho wants to use computer only as a
> tool to get into their intricacies.Nice,functional GUIs and sensibly setup
> Desktop Environment spare me time to concentrate on my own job.
> 
> I am into Linux for long-haul.I have switched on a point of principle and not
> because in India here there is any dearth of easily available pirate copies of
> any new Windows versions.In fact in India,Linux costs and troubles far more
> than Windows.
> 
> Hope we will all be part of the Linux evolution into a nice desktop OS as user
> community.
> 
> Rgds,
> 
> Parameshwara Bhat
> 
> Phil

Let us hope not that linux evolves into a gui, but that the linux gui(s)
{there are many} evolve to the point where they fulfill the needs of
people like you who "live" the the personal computer desktop world.
But let us also hope that they evolve in such a way as to leave the full
power of cli in place for those who would learn how. And in fact to work hand
in hand with it. 

Speaking for myself, I'm stuck half way between the gui mind set and the
cli. I like editable scripts, and well commented config files. I like
and greatly depend on what the gui tools do for me. But I sorely wish
the developers of these tools would remember that for some, the keyboard
is the primary input device. An example of what I'm talking about can be
found in LyX ( a text processor based on LaTeX ) LyX, like many unix
style tools, doesn't reinvent the wheel when it doesn't have to. There
are perfectly good spell checkers available, so why write a new one?
One of the spellcheckers LyX can be configured to use is aspell which in
a terminal window would interactively scroll through the file, showing
at least a window width line of the context of the questionable word,
and offering up a numbered list of suggested alternatives, along with a
list of what keys will skip that word, add it to the dictionary, etc...
Most of the choices involve but a single key stroke. (quite my favorite
spell checker.) But when LyX implements aspell they wrap it in gui
clothing. It puts a pop-up in the way of the original text that needs
to be dragged up, down, left, and/or right to see the context of the
questionable word. (like what happens in most gui spellcheckers) But
worse, while the original aspell is very strong on keyboard controls,
at least some the choices on the LyX gui's aspell pop-up require mouse
selection. [For example choosing which suggested word to replace the
misspelled one with] To a point and click guy this might be a small
thing. But to me... well lets just say I prefer to do my composing with
vim (where I have some marcos to feed my text to aspell...) 

I hope you find all your looking for in one or more of the guis in
linux. But please don't ask it to evolve into a single purpose
environment. 


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