Subject: Re: [lojban] emacs etc.

From: "Lex Spoon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 22:19:01 +0300

[email-masked] wrote:
> Depends on what you mean. Word may be very complex in some ways, but I can 
> take it out of the box and get acceptable results knowing no more than basic 
> typing skills. Admittedly its Help files suck, since they never call 
> anything by the name I use for it, but I can usually get around to whatever I 
> want eventually. The important point is that I can't use emacs until after 
> that 2 hours of training and then I still have the hassle to get to those odd 
> special cases. 

I think he's talking about what it takes to do something *complicated*. 
Perhaps one generalization that is actually true, is that Word supports
a "hit it harder" mentality, while emacs supports "hit it smarter". For
example, Emacs has regex-based search and replaced, and Word has arrow
keys and a backspace key. Anyway, every tool is good for different
things, and trying to prove that one is better than the other isn't
going to work.

To get back to the original topic, Lojban support tools for Word would
be terrific.

Oh, but I can't resist tossing in two quick things:

1. "normal people" versus "geeks" isn't the best way to think about it.
The main issue is training time--some people are willing to spend
several hours mastering something that will benefit them for decades,
and some people stick with their hammer and chisel. (And people don't
always make the optimal choice, either!)

2. "acceptable" depends on the expectations of what's possible. An
Emacs user is able to encode with rot13, spell check LaTeX files, and
extend the outline-browser for new formats. These powerful operations
wouldn't even be considered by most heavy Word users.

-Lex