More on Portability and the Ivory Tower (a tad long)

[Edward J Driscoll]

In article <28837 at wlbr.EATON.COM> mh at wlbr.eaton.com.UUCP (Mike Hoegeman) writes:
>
>
>Well, THEY ALL run on an Mac II . AND Suns AND silicon graphics AND
>vaxstations AND 386's. NeWS also runs on a regular Mac. The toolbox is
>for Mac's. Period. This does'nt bother me all that much , I'd use it if
>I thought it was best (I don't).  It bothers alot of others though.
>that must put out a  product on a bunch of different machines.

It would be nice to write applications only for people with
Mac II's, Suns, and 386's.  If you're in a position to do that,
more power to ya.  If you're not, and you're worried about
portability, you're going to have to stick with the ones even
supported by the little regular Mac.  I didn't ask about PC's,
but I'd be interested to know which apply to them.

>Staying with the lowest common denominator to gain a little speed
>has been proven over and over again to be a bad decision.

Proven?  Beyond all shadow of a doubt?  Don't tell me, man, tell
all those ignorant consumers who are going to buy application
B because it does everything application A does, only three
times faster, with less memory, and the little pull-down
menus and point-and-shoot graphic interfaces mean they don't
have to read the manuals.  Boy am I glad I don't have to
worry about THAT any more!  :-)

>
>I love mice , but for simple text editing functions and cursor movement
>the keyboard is better. If this was false why do all the mac programs
>come chocked full of "clover-keys", macros etc..? because things that are
>done over and over and over are faster from the keyboard. A good
>combination of both is the best. Things like no  mouse based cut and
>paste is  laughably brutal though. Unfortunately this is getting into
>religion-war territory here so maybe I'll shut up at this point.
>
>
>-mike

Yes, I've got a lot of mail from people saying that they prefer
cursor-keys for text editing.  That wasn't the intent of my
comment.  Of course you can get used to vi, of course it can
do the job, etc., etc.  But like vi or not, the interface IS
primitive.  Hackers like you and I might get used to that, but
would you try to sell vi to secretaries and business people?
Good luck, I've seen consultants get fired for as much.

-- 
Ed Driscoll
The University of Michigan
ejd at caen.engin.umich.edu