Re: WDSCI-L Digest, Vol 15, Issue 122

Michael,

Let me get this out of the way first: I did not take offense at any of
your responses to me. I also hope I was not offensive. It's very
likely I was pedantic or generally annoying, but hopefully not
offensive.

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 5:00 PM, <MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[John wrote:]

Well, I'll quibble with Word as the exemplar here, because
statistically no people use Word as a programming editor. But your
point is equally (or better) made inserting almost any programming
editor that runs in Windows. Perhaps most to the point: "many people
have a mental bobble when using RDi because they expect LPEX to act
like Eclipse's editor for Java".

[Buck insisted:]

Thus 'Word, or some other Windows app'.

Indeed, I think his point is different applications use different
keystrokes to do things. I'm sure they all have a historical reason.

For my money, Buck is one of the top writers on these lists. But I'm
still at a loss why Word is a good example here. Different
applications use different keystrokes to do things. A true statement,
to be sure. What does that tell me? How does that help me understand
why LPEX is such an oddball? Why did he pick a word processing program
rather than a programmer's editor? If the point was just to pick an
example of "Windows software at large" why not pick Internet Explorer
or Notepad or Paint?

By now there have been several other responses, including some from
Buck himself, that *have* given some good insights on how and why LPEX
is the way it is. I don't think bringing up Word advanced any of those
insights.

Perhaps some/many youngsters (which I have to remind myself before my
children do, that I am no longer even close to qualifying as a youngster)
are MS-Windows natives, but lots of us were programming long before
MS-Windows gained ascendency.

True enough. And to be fair, Emacs and vi are both venerable titans of
the Unix world, and each of them is definitely their own beast, very
different from the editors and IDEs created in "modern" times (most of
which are actually multiplatform, not just Windows).

I don't know if Buck said this first for sure, but I'll give him credit as
I really appreciate his contributions. I like the way expresses stuff:
- It's not religion, use what works for you.

Interesting. Buck does express things well, especially when it comes
to potentially charged topics. In this particular example (which may
or may not have been from him), I kind of get the urge to use religion
in the opposite direction: It *is* religion... *therefore* use what
works for you.

But most of all, I find that "a man convinced
against his will is of the same opinion still."

This is what I have found as well, and it's one of the lessons Buck
periodically repeats on these lists. Though I don't always succeed at
writing in a way that takes that lesson into account (to put it
mildly).

John Y.