Getting a text file rid of all superfluous blank lines

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 16:11, Welty, Richard wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
> >And in contrast I can't think of much of anything reusable
> >I've learned about GUI procedures. It's like starting from
> >scratch with every new program and context.
> 
> you may wish to look at your approach, then. when i first
> started java programming, i didn't tend to get much reusability
> out of my GUI components. much learning and reading later, i now
> get very good reusability, but it required getting my head 
> reoriented a bit to accomplish it. i think this is generally true
> of development in IDE contexts; we tend to fall into traps
> and develop in a backwards manner that kills reusability and
> modularity. usually this happens because we start throwing
> GUI widgets at the IDE screen before we've put any effort into
> thinking about how the program really ought to be structured.

I guess I didn't make that clear.  I didn't mean writing GUI
components - which I've never done.  I mean _using_ a GUI tool.
I can type a regular expression in a search pattern and know
what to expect and how to describe it to someone over the
phone.  If I use a GUI tool with some kind of visual search
I never know how to start or how to describe it.  Aside from
every tool being different and rarely scriptable for repeated
actions, every action depends on context to an extent that
makes re-using what you've learned impossible.   Obviously
I don't expect to have used the same GUI concept usefully
for 20 years, but I can't think of much that has worked the
same for even 5.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com