Re: Observation about group

[wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

jalapeno (jalapeno1@mac.com) wrote:
: > As you suggested with video: it is a quality issue.  If there is a perceived
: > gain in quality, many people (myself included) will try to improve it.  

: If 'code bloat' is a problem due to poorly implemented (or designed)
: software then think of "wast(ing) time choosing fonts" as poorly thought
: out (or designed) page layout.

Great point.  Now why is modern software designed to encourage ill conceived
design?  Contemporary software allows us to tweak things to our heart's
content in an interactive and very visual environment.  This approach
discourages logical formatting.

Now take AppleWorks as the counter example.  The display on the (8 bit) Apple
is not sophisticated enough to present the final output.  This encourages
logical formatting.  You are forced to think about the outcome of various
changes.  In LaTeX, and with the older logical formatting tags of HTML, you
can usually avoid the tangle of formatting since the software handles that for
you.  (BTW - both of LaTeX and HTML can be handled from an Apple //e since
almost any text editor will do.  :-)

: Elegence of design requires forethought whether your design is a computer
: program or a page layout. If you actually would "waste time" [...] you
: could hardly blame the platform. Again, this sounds like a personal
: problem ;o)

Maybe it is a personal problem, but it seems to be one which a lot of people
share.  Why is it next to impossible for people to find a machine which 
panders to this problem?  So yes, it is a platform issue.  An Apple II may
allow me to prepare LaTeX documents, but I still need access to another
machine to render those documents.  I also find dictionaries handy, yet it
is growing increasingly difficult to access online resources via a text only
interface.  Heck, it is growing increasingly difficult to access online
resources with older graphical browsers on older machines because they are
too slow.  The worse part is, these changes are quite meaningless (such as
real links being replaced by linking via JavaScript, and table formatting
overkill).  The problem is I can't do what I want to do because my machines
are artificially being rendered obsolete.  (Yes I can view the web with an
Apple II, but is the output meaningful?  Rememeber, I am only interested in
textual content here.)

: btw, I'm not criticising your choice of computer.

I understand that.  It is not as though I am asking a System 7 question in
comp.sys.mac.*.  ;-)

Byron.