Re: Mc Digest, Vol 70, Issue 3

[joe piskor <jpiskor telefonica net>]

On 02/06/2010 12:28 AM, chris glur wrote:
> Helmut wrote:-
>
> > Don't top post - please!
> > Don't full quote - please! (My full quote is just a bad example)
>
> Yes I hate top-posters too. But:
> I have to use gmail for this mail-list.
> Which restricts me to a crappy web-based facility.
> If I try to access via pop3, I'll be screwed, like when I accepted an
>  additional goog-facility, which needed a biger password, and my previous
>   email password became invalid.
> The whole layer of extra complication with cookies ..etc. makes web-based
> emailers bad.  Like I said adding complexity is bad.
>
> Because gmail is problematic to 'initiate a new topic', I want to tell
> this *here*:-
> I had great productivity increase results with mc > cedit > User-menu/F11
> for scheme-code.
> My previous notes, stated that I didn't like the 'structured editor' facility,
> because I had to lose sight of the text while the process inserted
> the new text. Yes the annoyance of 'loss of sight of the subject' for half a
> second, is related to the annoyance against top-posting ?
>
> Once I'd accepted this small annoyance, and I'd patched cedits 'lisp' facilty
> towards scheme, I found that the syntax-colouring and "just enter a
> full structure
> at a time instead of single-characters" was a MASSIVE productivity booster.
> It's especially good for scheme, which has only a few syntax elements.
>
> The beauty of such a system, is that when you work with a new language, or
> a "haven't used for years" one, you re/familiarise yourself with the syntax
> while building the cedit-templates. And 'capture' the knowledge of the syntax
> -- that's how 'expert systems' work.  Then you don't have to waste your creative
> mental resources on syntax trivialities. After all, an IfThenElse construct has
> only 4 elements: its name, the predicate, the consequent, the alternate.
>
> Why enter 6 keys for 'banana' when it's just a SINGLE-concept !?
> I want to extend cedit's user-menu to be able to enter IDs once only, and then
> just pick-them-off-a-menu for later inserting. Scoping won't be possible.
>
> So: avoid complexity and adding too many features to mc/cedit, but I
> found cedit's
> syntax hi-lighting and template-inserting editor a big productivity booster.
> The hi-lighting/colouring and predefined layout/pretty-printing makes eg. the 4
> components of the IfThenElse construct evident/identifiable from amongst the
> mess of brackets.
>
> I can't understand why they haven't eliminated char-by-char code writing, and
> replaced it by menu-driven -- a bit like spreadsheets. The only things
> you need to
> originate, besides the 'sequence', are ID names.
> When you want to instruct an elevator to go to floor 9, you select ONE button,
> instead of writing a syntactically valid message!?
>
> == Chris Glur.
> _______________________________________________
> Mc mailing list
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc

Hi all - first post to the list...
I certainly don't want to start a flame war as I think everyone is
entitled to their own opinion (including Me)...

I've been an MC user for a number of years now - transitioned from
Norton Commander under MS-DOS/Win to my first linux machine in '93...

Anyways, I'll put in my $0.02 worth...

Seeing MC evolve over time - and seeing its capabilities increase *a
lot* - I get the impression that it is trying to do a Windows (tm) sort
of thing, i.e. being a one-in-all solution for everything - a solution
looking for a problem to fix. By bundling so much of everything into the
application, we're drifting away from the tried-and-true *nix approach
to things: Lots of small, reliable, simple tools that can be chained
together in a way to do Big Things.

Don't get me wrong - I have no intention of abandoning MC and will keep
up-to-date with the latest version installed on my systems (Gentoo,
FWIW). But with - few exceptions - the New Improved functions don't help
my productivity (YMMV); they tend to force me to rethink the way I
perform day-to-day functions and slow me down until my fingers start
thinking for themselves once again.

You use a tool for a long time, and when the basics change you have a
new tool to learn - it's not just adapting to a minor change in an
existing tool as that simple change forces you to "think around it".
Maybe it just gets harder as your habits develop and get ingrained over
time, but if that's the case then there might be a need to accomodate that.

I don't know for sure where I'm going with this, but I just wanted to
get my ideas out on the table. I get the impression that the list is
getting bogged down in trivial items that may enhance someone's "mc
experience" but do comparatively little for the rest of us. I've seen
other OS projects with the ability to cast votes for new features to be
implemented based on user requests. It's all well and good for the
maintainers of a project to have the final say in what features should
be included, deleted, or modified, but if those decisions aren't driven
by the user base, then that same user base may drift away over time.

Right up front, I'm not offering a solution to a problem that may not
exist - just getting my impression of things out for consideration and
stimulating some conversation. I fully recognize that if I don't want a
newer version of a tool, I'm under no obligation to upgrade; I'd just
like the those upgrades to be unobtrusive and optional. Let the tool
adapt to the user; don't force the user to adapt to the tool...

And get off my lawn!!! :-)

(but thanks for keeping the project alive...)

Regards to all...