DONT READ -- Continuing James Donald flamewar

DONT READ THIS UNLESS YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT JAMES DONALD'S "OPINION"
OF UNIX -- HIT DELETE NOW.

jamesd@com.informix.com says:
> But my statement concerning internationalization and
> resource files was correct.

Nope, sorry.

Posix defines these things called "Locales". They provide automatic
and seamless support for things like changing currency symbols, date
formats, fonts, etc. The X windows system has full support for
internationalization in most of its widget sets, too.

> I have made a little tour of people in my company who work on both
> unix and Windows.

Sorry that you don't work with people who know about these things, but
ignorance is not equivalent to absence.

Frankly, I have yet to see a single statement from you that actually
bore some relationship to reality. The most devistating comment you
seem to be able to come up with about why Unix is bad is that make --
an application that doesn't even come with DOS -- used to have some
places where it required tabs. 

Perry

On Fri, 27 Jan 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> DONT READ THIS UNLESS YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT JAMES DONALD'S "OPINION"
> OF UNIX -- HIT DELETE NOW.
> 
> jamesd@com.informix.com says:
> > But my statement concerning internationalization and
> > resource files was correct.
> 
> Nope, sorry.
> 
> Posix defines these things called "Locales". They provide automatic
> and seamless support for things like changing currency symbols, date
> formats, fonts, etc. The X windows system has full support for
> internationalization in most of its widget sets, too.

I know what a Locale is:

The fact that you confuse this with the internationalization
problem shows that most unix folk have no tools for this problem,
so that the idea of tools that address it is inconceivable
to them.

Typical primitive unix mentality.   I would expect no better
of someone who is unaware that the times have changed since
the days when the PC world did not have make files (because
our programs were so small we did not need them.)

I will explain this to you in simple terms:

To facilitate internationalization, everything that is 
translatable, for example dialogs, buttons, etc, has to
be in one set of files, and everything that should not
be translated needs to be in another set of files.

If you do this by hand you get an immense number of
connections between the two file sets, and the possibility
of many subtle bugs being introduced when one set
of files is translated.

Therefore your tools for painting dialog boxes and menus etc.
must work in such a way as to facilitate separation and 
translation, which is done in windows by having *.rc files
that get translated, and *.c files that do not.

In Unix each company seems to have its own hand rolled tools
to accomplish this task, or no tools at all -- they do it
by hand.

(Somebody sent me a letter saying that Next Step supports
graphical editing of dialog boxes.  While this is an important
part of internationalizability, it is not internationalizability.

For example Visual Basic also supports graphical editing of dialog boxes,
yet it does not support internationalization in the way that
App Studio and Resource Workshop do.)

> Frankly, I have yet to see a single statement from you that actually
> bore some relationship to reality. The most devistating comment you
> seem to be able to come up with about why Unix is bad is that make --
> an application that doesn't even come with DOS -- used to have some
> places where it required tabs. 

You display profound ignorance Perry

We in the DOS world have been using make ever since we had enough
memory to make it worth while.

Furthermore the "make" bug that I complained of, shows typical unix
shoddiness.  Unix tools have sharp edges in the wrong places.

It is these unexpected sharp edges, like chain saw with no
handle, that make unix hard to use.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                          |  
We have the right to defend ourselves     |   http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind     |  
of animals that we are. True law          |   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the     |  
arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.  |   jamesd@netcom.com

"James A. Donald" says:
> I know what a Locale is:

You've shown no indication that you do.

> The fact that you confuse this with the internationalization
> problem shows that most unix folk have no tools for this problem,

Vigorous insistance doesn't change the truth, James.

> In Unix each company seems to have its own hand rolled tools
> to accomplish this task, or no tools at all -- they do it
> by hand.

We don't have symbolic debuggers either, as I recall.

Perry

> "James A. Donald" says:
> > I know what a Locale is:
> 
> You've shown no indication that you do.
> 
> > The fact that you confuse this with the internationalization
> > problem shows that most unix folk have no tools for this problem,
> 
> Vigorous insistance doesn't change the truth, James.
> 
> > In Unix each company seems to have its own hand rolled tools
> > to accomplish this task, or no tools at all -- they do it
> > by hand.
> 
> We don't have symbolic debuggers either, as I recall.

Why don't you guys take this private little war TO EMAIL???  I don't want
to hear it on the list.  Hitting 'g' instead of 'r' only makes you guys
look like idiots instead of spreading your witty little remarks all over
the net.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
                       ** PGP encrypted email preferred! **

Cop: "How many beers have you had tonight, bro?"
Suspect: "Seventy."  -- from the TV show "Cops"

Notice that my thread title -- was humorous and self mocking
"Even more holy wars on unix", and that the 
articles that I posted were very funny.


Whereas Perry -- the salesman who refused to take 
yes for ananswer when dealing with Netscape --  is 
filled with passionate rage.

What is up Perry -- do you have piles, or is the 
sawdust and chickenshit diet putting your temper 
on a short fuse?

One can reasonably argue, as he is now arguing, 
that unix is a good modern development environment.  
I think he is wrong -- I was amused at how unix folk 
were impressed at how I casually put up windows gui 
interface for a throwaway program that would
only be used once.

But it is a position that a rational person could 
reasonably believe, and might reasonably argue if 
this was the GUI development list and not the 
cypherpunks list.

But to claim, as some have claimed, that unix is 
as user friendly as Windows or the Mac, when 
suitably configured -- is a sign of utter irrationality 
that shows that those who assert such a fantastic claim 
are incapable or rational thought or rational
discussion on the topic.

The letters I have received also give ample evidence that 
those who hold this view are incapable of rational 
discussion on the matter.

The Holy bible attitude to unix is illustrated by the 
fact that the most flagrant and outrageous unix bugs 
are held to be correct behavior by definition -- 
"Unix does this, therefore it is right, and if you 
destroy your files as a result of this behavior then 
unix is right, and you are wrong."

Now one can argue that unix has bugs and DOS has 
bugs, but unix people, or at least those of them 
so irrational as to make the claim that Unix is 
user friendly, confronted with a unix bug, proclaim 
that the bug is is right, and DOS is wrong for not 
having the bug.


For example I received numerous letters arguing that the
the unix "mv" command is more powerful than the separate
DOS "replace" and "rename" commands.

This is like arguing that a combination hairbrush and 
chainsaw is more powerful than having two separate
tools, one a hairbrush and one a chainsaw.  One can
plausibly claim that such a tool is indeed powerful,
but that is hardly the point.


-
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                          |  
We have the right to defend ourselves     |   http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind     |  
of animals that we are. True law          |   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the     |  
arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.  |   jamesd@netcom.com

> Whereas Perry -- the salesman who refused to take 
> yes for ananswer when dealing with Netscape --  is 
> filled with passionate rage.
> 
> What is up Perry -- do you have piles, or is the 
> sawdust and chickenshit diet putting your temper 
> on a short fuse?

While there may be something said for Perry's technical expertise, that
certainly doesn't excuse his rudeness.

> One can reasonably argue, as he is now arguing, 
> that unix is a good modern development environment.  
> I think he is wrong -- I was amused at how unix folk 
> were impressed at how I casually put up windows gui 
> interface for a throwaway program that would
> only be used once.

That all depends on what you are expecting in a development environment, and
what the goal of the development project is.  If your goal is to quickly
produce a GUI interface, then Windows and VB is indeed the way to go.  VB
has reasonable debugging facilities built in.  Not quite as good as gdb,
but reasonable.

If your goal is to produce non-GUI code, then UNIX offers a superior development
environment.

No operating system can be all things to all people (much as Bill Gates would
like that to happen).  Most UNIX systems suck at doing real-time processing,
and most Windows systems suck at doing anything approaching preemptive
multitasking.  The right tool for the right job - why make one environment
or the other do everything?

I've been hacking UNIX for 10 years, and doing Windows programming for almost
that long, so I've seen both environments, and know that one size *doesn't*
fit all.

> But to claim, as some have claimed, that unix is 
> as user friendly as Windows or the Mac, when 
> suitably configured -- is a sign of utter irrationality 
> that shows that those who assert such a fantastic claim 
> are incapable or rational thought or rational
> discussion on the topic.

It could be argued by some that UNIX is even less user-friendly than
MS-DOS, but that comes from the fact that UNIX wasn't designed to be anything
approaching a production system.  It was written by programmers for
programmers to hack on.

> The Holy bible attitude to unix is illustrated by the 
> fact that the most flagrant and outrageous unix bugs 
> are held to be correct behavior by definition -- 
> "Unix does this, therefore it is right, and if you 
> destroy your files as a result of this behavior then 
> unix is right, and you are wrong."

I'd say "UNIX does it *this* way, therefore it's correct ... for UNIX."
Different OS's do things differently.  Windows is designed to hold the
user's hand.  UNIX isn't.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
                       ** PGP encrypted email preferred! **

Cop: "How many beers have you had tonight, bro?"
Suspect: "Seventy."  -- from the TV show "Cops"