Re: Fred's EVER GROWING Linux Annoyance List THREAD; take out EVER GROWING THREAD for the original Subject!

Thus quoth Lawrence MacIntyre on Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 05:23:16PM -0400:
> > 
> > Seriously... As this same question about the following DOS commands to
> > the _average_ Windows user (and even some "advanced" users) and they
> > cringe:

Here you are badly mixing up DOS and Windows commands. Dos does not have
most of your list, and in Windows NT you don't need several of them, like
'loadhigh', 'devicehigh' and 'buffers'. Also 'edlin' is not the world's 
most popular editor. Notice how many of them seem to have been borrowed
from Unix. In the whole, DOS has a couple of improvements over CP/M, but
what I miss is the distinction between physical and logical devices. 
(VMS has them too, and they can be longer than a single letter)

> > Neither is DOS... I guess that's my point.  There is a reason it was
> > abandoned by the general populace.  It is also the reason why
> > "graphical" file manipulation shells, and Menu systems were so popular
> > in DOS (anybody remember DougMenu?)... because the average everyday user
> > HATED DOS, they wanted it DEAD, and they have fully embraced graphical
> > computing.  

I hated the Mac from day one. The lack of a command prompt leaves you with
nothing but a handful of options from the menu. 

But you have a point. Windows does have command interpreter, and it's even
possible to start it without the GUI. It's just a whole new set of commands
the Unix user has needs to learn. Windows 2000 comes with a telnet server,
so whether you connect to a Windows or a Unix machine, you are going to use
the command line. How are you going to create a shell script c.q. a .BAT file
that takes the name of an 'Office' argument and runs the OpenOffice c.q. MS
Office spell checker on it (maybe with the corrected file as a second argu-
ment)?

> > > > > >Did you ever use VMS?

> > VMS was a wonderful powerful system, but when I discovered UNIX, even
> > though the initial stages were tough going (its always hard to learn
> > something new), I was so thankful for the shortened syntaxes.

I prefer Unix for its simplicity. One thing I liked about VMS is the filename
convention where you can upload a file to a remote host on DECnet with a 
simple COPY (yes, you had upper-case filenames) command like 
	COPY PROG.PAS;13 REMOTE::[YOUR.DIR]PROG.PAS;1
Some users must have liked the fact that when you edited a file, you would
get a new file with a higher version number and still have the old version.

I wrote a simple hexdump program that managed to dump most files by telling
VMS that it had a fixed record lenght of 512 bytes.

Where on Unix and DOS you would do something like:
	prog <input.dat >output.dat
A similar effect on VMS would be achieved with:
	SET SYS$INPUT=INPUT.DAT
	SET SYS$OUTPUT=OUTPUT.DAT
	PROG
(it's about fifteen years a go I used VMS)

> > Praise Be!  Someone with a clue.

	apt-get install clue

> > > Now, I know who you are... you're a vi freak, that's why 
> > > you're so borned. vi is completely unusable, trust me.
> > > 
> > 
> > Huh?
> > 
> > Are you sure it is COMPLETELY unusable.  COMPLETELY?
> > 
> > > I rely on pico, else some GUI editor, else emacs else vi.
> > 
> > I noticed you didn't say that that's why you rely on the DOS editor.
> > Hmmm?  Why is that?  Is it because it isn't full featured.
> > 
> > Personally, I write most of my documents in Notepad, Kate, Abiword,
> > Word, Open Office Writer, Wordpad, notetab.
> > 
> > If I am on the command line, I use vi (though vim for Windows is a great
> > safe way to look at potentially hazardous files).
> > 
> > I find vim to be very usable.  How do you remember all of the
> > CTRL-META-Command key combinations in emacs?  Hmmm... could it be that
> > you have learned them over time?  And if you forget them, I bet you have
> > to look them up... thought so.

This posting is written with vim. I read before I write, so the fact that it
does not alter a file until you type 'i', 'a', or 'o' is an advantage. 

> > Windows will not boot to allow you to use the graphical tools to fix the
> > problem.

I learned that you can boot Windows '98 in 'DOS mode' and call regedit from
the command prompt. 

Kind regards,


Daniel von Asmuth


-- 
	If Gates had meant us to use Windows,
	He would have given us three hands.