Aucbvax.2411
fa.works
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works
Thu Jul 23 01:51:19 1981
Various subspecies
>From Joe.Newcomer@CMU-10A Thu Jul 23 00:21:22 1981
Actually, the dangerous subspecies is the person who builds a
system which cannot be easily extended by other than wizards,
or used unless dozens of obscure interactions are understood.
I plead guilty to belonging to this group, having built a
couple examples when I was young and foolish (the only current
change in state is that I am somewhat older...). However, I
also recognize this is a totally losing way of building systems.
For example, I cannot extend EMACS without learning TECO, and I
haven't time or inclination (I also don't plan to read hex dumps
from the VAX. I know as little of the PERQ p-codes as I can get
away with). What we REALLY need is clean, understandable way to
specify extensions to systems; for example MockLisp in VAX Unix
EMACS is infinitely superior to TECO as an algorithmic language.
Scribe is far better than most text formatting languages, and
non-technical people can learn enough to build custom Scribe
formats. The "picture" format in my BH program started out
as a high-level concept for specifying what output should look
like, but I quickly found out that the power of the language
was inadequate. The syntax remained, the power increased, and
it is about as humane as TECO right now. I hope to rewrite it
into a Scribe-like notation, but that is a project for another
year.
Brian Reid once claimed that one of the triumphs of Scribe was
that it "made it possible for secretaries and senior faculty
to use that vile device, the XGP". This was not meant as a
slur on either group; rather, it pointed out that most people
don't want to learn an infinite amount of trash just to get
their work done. The two groups named usually don't have the
time of graduate students, hackers, and nurds to worry about
details such as the two-line XGP font-load delay our system
had. I find that I have less and less time to worry about,
say, how to make CR in EMACS behave like LF and how to stop
LF from behaving differently if the previous line started at
the left margin. I know what effect I want; I don't want to
know about 37 different variables, TECO FS-flags, and other
crap to get a simple change in behavior. This is a lot of
what is involved in getting really good personal workstations;
if I have to remember dozens of incantations to, say, set up
defaults when I boot, I'm not going to be very happy.
joe
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