On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 1:39 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
Marc had some insight, he said that roff -ms mostly said what you wanted to do, not how to do it.
Which of course is the basic foundation of Rob's and Brian's "UNIX philosophy" from their >>still<< ever so relevent book UPE.
These are the core ideas that to me are the basis for a true 'thinking persons view of computer world' vs. the 'I can do anything view' or vs. 'I don't care, you can do it for me.' MS Word (Windows philidophy) fron Redmond tries to tell me what I should want something 'should' look like/do - i.e. hey you user -- just need to 'fill in the blanks' and we will do everything for you. Which if what you want to do is what they thought of and what they think is proper can be easy no doubt, but you are screwed if what you value / desire is just a little different. LaTex and friends (VMS from the OS standpoint) strive to solve that by make everything possible so it can be as 'pretty' as possible.
We were recently discussing Oster's new book and his term about 'deep interfaces.' To me the message of UPE (and the roff family) is simple: I've thought about what I want: i.e. Computer do what want you to do for me, not what you think I should do or make me work so hard to get what I want done, that is not worth the trouble. Then make that simple for me to describe to the computer and the complex part, be handled by the system doing the work, but the work should not be so 'hidden' that I as the user of the system, can not describe something different than what you (the system programmer) think I need to do or may be so complex for you as the system implementor to do for me.
Clem