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From: D.M. Procida on 26 Apr 2010 12:49 Pd <peterd.news(a)gmail.invalid> wrote: > D.M. Procida <real-not-anti-spam-address(a)apple-juice.co.uk> wrote: > > > No, Google is the new Microsoft. In a way, Google is really the new IBM, > > except that when Microsoft used to be the new IBM, it did it so much > > that people stopped remembering what the IBM was. Now Microsoft is > > starting to become what the actual IBM became after Microsoft became the > > new IBM, but people still remember it. > > As an analogy, that fails in so many ways. The sort-of similarity is > that Google is as ubiquitous as a search engine as Microsoft was as a > personal computer operating system. .... and the fact now Apple and Google now square up for dominance over technology in the way Apple and Microsoft did, with directly competing products, and with a needing-the-enemy kind of relationship that has uncanny echoes of the past (right down to Google's sigh of relief over Apple's recent high-profile move into web advertising, because having Apple as competition gets the regulators off their backs). > I think the single biggest difference is that Google actually innovate, > and seem to care about that elusive quality "quality". Google Wave and > Buzz suck though. They are the Zune of Google. > > Another similarity is that neither of them really give a toss about > users as individuals with their silly personal desires for privacy and > control. Keep going. Daniele
From: Woody on 26 Apr 2010 12:56 Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > [1] Actually, Knuth was using it as DTP on a powerful minicomputer in > > > the 1970s, while it was under development. Of *course* he had a > > > terminal on his desk, what 1970s mathematically minded computer > > > scientist wouldn't, if he could? > > > > I guess he must have done a lot of algorithm work, as I have just > > downloaded the source of XSL-FO (so I can add some extensions) and his > > name appears in a lot of the source files in > > org/apache/fop/layoutmanager (such as blockKnuthSequence.java and > > inlineKnuthSequence.java) > > Erm, yeah, algorithms are his specialist field AFAIK. > > It was why he wrote TeX - so he could typeset his books without the > typesetters making a horrible mess of them (as they had been doing - he > was driven to write TeX due to frustration with poor quality work done > by others). TeX's just a side-show for Knuth - last major update in > 1983[1], last bug fix I heard of was the obY2K fix (very minor, not > needed to permit TeX to function, just a messed up data log issue). > > Ever heard of The Art of Computer Programming? Yes, someone where I worked used to have them (at work), I didn't place the name as him. > That was the series of > books TeX was written to typeset. IIRC, Knuth's idea was to catalogue > all the fundamental computer algorithms in one set of volumes (the job > has expanded since begun...) > [1] But the situation is not as static as you might think. TeX is > finished, fixed, done and dusted. TeX derivatives are a different > matter... I would imagine, for a start even for a fixed software, the platform changes around it. -- Woody www.alienrat.com
From: Rowland McDonnell on 26 Apr 2010 13:19 zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > zoara <me18(a)privacy.net> wrote: > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> > > > wrote: [snip] > > DeskTop Publishing is what DTP stands for. > > I know - I wasn't asking what the acronym stood for, but what the > definition was. There is no formal, fixed, solely defined definition of any such term which is universally accepted by all. There are different ideas based on different degrees of understanding. I'm looking at `what real software is and has been really used for the job described by the term DTP'. I'm not working on the idea that `It can't be DTP unless it's wysiwyg', which you should recognize by now is a grossly mistaken outlook. I'm not at all surprised that you've failed to recognize that fact - it's your usual mode of operation: close your mind to new ways of thinking, that's it, innit? Which means I'm sort of wasting my time trying to explain this to you, but someone else might learn something. I assume that you will not. My understanding is rather more in-depth than the average, on account of me having actually used a variety of DTP software, beginning with LaTeX in the 1980s. I've dabbled with PageMaker and Quark Xpress (to the extent of doing a little real work with them), poked around other things, damned if I can recall these days. (I'd've loved to have tried out the Letraset DTP rig - it had the Zapf-improved version of TeX's para and page building algorithms behind it, very nice indeed. These days, I really need to look at InDesign) (assuming that you agree with me that Locoscript on the Amstrad PCW and Wordwise and View on the BBC Micro don't count as DTP) (which has just reminded me of one of the most startling sights I've seen - back in about 93, I was at L.E.T. (one of our typesetters). One of the galley slaves turned his monitor away as I entered the room. When he was it was me, he turned it back. You know those pr0n mags which have stars strategically placed on the front cover, covering up bits of photograph? Right, well, he was doing that job for an actual pr0n mag, one A4 page on a bigger-than-A4 monitor, and oh god it was as bad as looking at a medical textbook - hell of a shock to me, because my brain was in gear for *MY* rags, being semiconductors and electronic testing. And yeah, I've shared student accomodation with medical textbooks and the students... The medical student who was also a nurse had the most - erm - off-putting tales. And the funniest ones. I particularly liked the one where he saved a patient's life by punching a doctor hard enough that he got knocked out. A shame it was only a junior doctor - the consultants need that sort of thing rather more.) > My understanding was that the "desktop publishing > revolution" was fuelled by WYSIWYG, which brought the ability to publish > documents to the less-technical masses. <puzzled> Well, yes. That has nothing whatever to do with it. > Before WYSIWYG, there wasn't any > DTP... But I've shown that there was, so why are you stating something you know to be false? > > *YOU* might define it as wysiwyg - I don't, and I've not met that > > usage before. It probably is defined as wysiwyg by some fanbois of > > whatever, but that's a stupid definition. > > It appears to be the definition Wikipedia uses: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_publishing > > "Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer and > WYSIWYG page layout software" > > The same page mentions Tex but defines that (in italics for emphasis) as > desktop *typesetting*, in contrast to desktop *publishing*. But Wikip is not any sort of definitive reference and contains many mis-apprehensions of that sort. That page was obviously written by someone who does not understand what TeX does. TeX was - when FIRST released - a fully-developed DTP system, not merely typesetting, but a full-on `churn out printer-ready copy' rig. You can tell that via the source code for the book TeX. Check it out - install MacTeX (STFW), then find the file texbook.tex. Try to typset texbook.tex. That will fail. Hack the source to deal with the incredibly clever, devious, and cunning programming in the texbook.tex source which stops you typesetting texbook.tex, then do it again[1]. See? It's the book - all there except for the covers (which Knuth didn't prepare himself, or they would be included). You can send TeX's output straight to the printer (as in high sped rotary printing press for proper book publication) - if the software can do that, and also permits you to `do the layout as well as the typesetting', it's publishing software, not merely typsetting. > That text has been there for a while, so it *seems* like my > understanding - that DTP is WYSIWYG - is the more usual one. Aye, well, terms get re-defined by people who wish the terms to mean particular things at particular times for their particular reasons. In this case, the particular reason seems to be a failure to understand that TeX ain't like troff. It's always worth bearing in mind that TeX based approaches are a complement to the wysiwyg approaches: you'd be mad to try to use TeX for magazine layout or anything else that needed a custom graphical layout on every page. For the same set of reasons, I reckon you'd be mad to use anything but TeX for typesetting your telephone directory. Most jobs fall somewhere in the middle. > > It was wysiwyg that got DTP popular - that's probably behind your > > mistaken idea here. > > Possibly, but I don't seem to be the only one with that > "misunderstanding". Perhaps you have misunderstood? Perhaps you're just ignoring the historical facts? > > It's just lose, lose, lose if you do it wysiwyg; except for the minor > > point that you can get the staff to drive the wysiwyg kit. > > That's a minor point?! <sigh> It's what we call `irony', Woody. I was using ironic humour to make the point that while TeX is technically superior to wysiwyg for some jobs, it's not crazy for a firm to go the wysiwyg route because while it'll be more expensive and lower quality than the TeX route, it has the great advantage that you can actually get the job done because you can in fact get the staff to drive Quark Xpress. <shrug> Too subtle for you, was I? (btw, staff to drive TeX exist, and they're easy to get hold of, sort of. But you have to look in the special places and you'll probably find it hard to get a TeXnician to work in yer office as such 'cos they're few and far between compared to the huge numbers of people who take training courses to learn to use the expensive commercial publishing packages.) [snip] > So what *are* you saying? Something which experience teaches me you will not understand - no point trying to explain. Rowland. [1] No, *YOU* don't need to learn TeX-the-language to do that, you really don't. And illegality probably turns up somewhere in this process, sod it, just delete it all when you're done and if you want a copy of the TeXbook, buy one on paper like I did. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Rowland McDonnell on 26 Apr 2010 13:35 Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: [snip] > > [1] But the situation is not as static as you might think. TeX is > > finished, fixed, done and dusted. TeX derivatives are a different > > matter... > > I would imagine, for a start even for a fixed software, the platform > changes around it. I'm not sure what that might mean. Extended versions of TeX now churn out pdfs and can use system founts directly *AND* use the fancy typesetting features of OpenType founts and the AAT (or whatever Apple's version's called) equivalent. Directly, without the traditional TeX fount installation process. Not much of it's platform-dependent, really - a wee bit to give access to the founts on different platforms, I suppose. But short of needing system-specific i/o libraries for file access and sending text to the console, there's norralorra system-specific stuff to get involved with. For sure an OS might change - okay, so recompile with the latest compiler if that's an issue. Who needs to change the function of the source code, for all that you might need to tweak things a bit to get it to compile (and then you test against the Knuth-supplied test suite to make sure you got it right). Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Gareth John on 26 Apr 2010 13:47
Tim Streater <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> wrote: > In article > <1jhkcya.1p8krfx1nopc36N%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > [snip] > > > > The fact that IBM is a successful business which meets its contracts for > > its customers has no bearing at all on the appallingly shitty way it > > unfairly exploits its workers using contracts that I find sickening. > > > > So I'm not sure why you should bring up your example at all - it's quite > > irrelevant. > > > > What's relevant is that IBM takes ownership of your thoughts when you > > sign a contract to work as an IBM employee. > > > > All your thoughts belong to IBM - all of them. All your creativity is > > owned by IBM once you've signed up to take their pay. > > > > If you are a creative person who does not mind being forced to give away > > all your rights to all your ideas, not just the ones you come up with on > > the firm's time and for the firm's projects, I'm sure that's acceptable > > to you. > > > > But some of us think that it's grossly unjust for a firm to claim such > > ownership. > > No different in any other comparable company, I would have thought. Such terms were certainly specified in my contract of employment with a Cambridge University department - they owned the rights to any product-innovative ideas or inventions I had while in their employment. -- From Gareth John Please pull out the plug if you want to reply by email |