Who were the opponents of Lisp?
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From: Tim Bradshaw on 18 Apr 2010 06:26 On 2010-04-17 22:56:36 +0100, Robert Uhl said: > That doesn't just apply to mathematics, though--that applies to anything > written. I think that is probably correct, yes.
From: Rob Warnock on 19 Apr 2010 07:40 Robert Uhl <eadmund42(a)NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote: +--------------- | m_mommer(a)yahoo.com (Mario S. Mommer) writes: | > In my experience, writing directly to TeX or anything similar is asking | > for trouble unless you are doing simple things. The source is not all | > that readable, and the hardcopy looks too good. The result is that you | > do not see the mistakes and the holes in the arguments. Taking a draft | > on paper and cleaning it up by copying the non-strike-out to new a paper | > draft is the only really good way to make sure you are really really | > really going over every detail again. | | That doesn't just apply to mathematics, though--that applies to anything | written. .... | My senior year, I chose to write all my papers by hand, starting from an | outline, then rewriting it fleshed out a bit, then rewriting again, and | so on until I had a finished paper, all written longhand. Then I'd go | home and typeset it with LaTeX. +--------------- As Halmos said in his classic little essay: http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/pg/data/halmosw.pdf [3.3 MB, 30 pages] How to write mathematics P. R. Halmos ... 6. Write in Spirals The best way to start writing, perhaps the only way, is to write on the spiral plan. According to the spiral plan the chapters get written in the order 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. You think you know how to write Chapter 1, but after you have done it and gone on to Chapter 2, you'll realize that you could have done a better job on Chapter 2 if you had done Chapter 1 differently. There is no help for it but to go back, do Chapter 1 again differently, do a better job on Chapter 2, and then dive into Chapter 3. And of course you know what will happen: Chapter 3 will show up the weaknesses of Chapters 1 and 2, and there is no help for it... etc., etc., etc. I especially have always liked this bit: When you come to rewrite, however, and however often that may be necessary, do not edit but rewrite. It is tempting to use a red pencil to indicate insertions, deletions, and permutations, but in my experience it leads to catastrophic blunders. Against human impatience, and against the all too human partiality everyone feels toward his own words, a red pencil is much too feeble a weapon. [...] Rewrite means write again -- every word. -Rob ----- Rob Warnock <rpw3(a)rpw3.org> 627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/> San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Peter Axon on 22 Apr 2010 19:40 pjb(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes: > Peter Axon <peter(a)canvasbook.com.au> writes: > >> [...] English [...] (the standard language of the Internet) [...] > > No, not really. > > > http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm > > > English is used by less than 1/3 of the Internet users, and less than > 40% of the web pages. And more importantly, its usage is dropping fast > (relatively). That site doesn't look all that official but even according to it English is the most used language. Even if it wasn't the most used I would still argue that English is the 'Standard' language of the Internet. -- Peter
From: Tim Bradshaw on 22 Apr 2010 09:15 On 2010-04-22 13:38:39 +0100, Adam Funk said: > I'm fairly sure the factual claims in what I wrote are correct. So am I, although there seems to be some evidence for spaced em-dashes in US typography. Those would be uncommon in European typography I think, and I was surprised to find people saying they were OK. --tim
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 22 Apr 2010 11:16
On 2010-04-21 08:21:50 -0400, Tim Bradshaw said: > I think that, in the days of typewriters, this was clearly true - I > have some (small) experience of sub-editing text, and you do quite > rapidly end up with something which is hard to read. Back in that bygone day, newspaper copy was commonly done triple or quadruple spaced on a typewriter whose return stops were set to a 40 character column and consequently, with very wide margins even on the narrow paper used by copy writers. This gave editors plenty of room between and beside lines to mark up copy and still have it readable for the press guys without the need to re-type the whole story. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro |