Re: Text processor

[Marco Fonseca <mfonseca yorku ca>]

jason@whizzird.net wrote:
> 
> On 19-Jun-99 Marco Fonseca scribbled:
> > I wish, with Robin, there was something like that in Linux and I think
> > that the programming end of the Linux community doesn't seem to get what
> > the needs of the user end of this community are. Ok, not always.
> >
> > Marco Fonseca
> 
> this is a pretty popular sentiment. such things don't appear overnight though.
> believe me people are working on adding easy to use apps to linux. word perfect
> was not written in a day. and for those who can't wait for a quality app to be
> built maybe M$ will port office (lots of you are laughing but check this out).
> 
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/249152.asp
> 
> ----------------------------------
> E-Mail: jason@whizzird.net
> Date: 19-Jun-99
> Time: 16:37:58
> gtkICQ: 41540388
> 
> Linux Power!
> You will be de-assimilated.
> ----------------------------------

I am not laughing. I think they might just do it and make a lot of
things pretty hard for a lot of people: look what they did to the
Netscape crowd. But no, I am not wishing for the commercial colonisation
of the Linux world; I am wishing - and I know this is not just wishful
thinking- that the process of developing user-friendly applications gets
speeded up. It's not that people like me just came into the
Linux-sphere, it's that the world outside Linux -and inside Linux as
well- is moving pretty fast. The user-end of the Linux community, and
I'm starting to grow roots there, is expecting a lot from the
programmer's side. Maybe we shouldn't expect much more, but then again,
you guys opened the source up, you guys offered the OS to the whole
world: the desktops, the window-managers, the offices... now, naturally,
the world is beginning to pay attention and we want more than just
text-processing toys. Until I can write at least one dissertation
chapter under Linux, I cannot take Linux as my OS of choice, as much as
I'd like to. And I would really like to. If all I did were
programming... I could do that on just about any text editor bundled
with Linux and there's tons of these.