Re: Apple and the Holy War

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <pJwT4.603$W45.954@newsfeed.slurp.net>,
Forrest <bctimes@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
> Somewhere, pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
> 
>>Why the 78 chars/line limit?
> 
> Because that's what RJLissner picked.
 
Why did he do that?
 
> The last two characters were reserved for spaces and return characters.
 
OK, of these two one is occupied for the return character.  How many
spaces can you squeeze in the other one?
 
And why limit the line length to 80 characters?
 
>> Wordstar allowed up to 255 characters
>> per line -- yes, it had horisontal scrolling.
> 
> So did Apple Writer (you know, the one Don Lancaster used to kick out 
> PostScript to his LaserWriter).  Also WordPerfect IIe, IIRC.
> It was a very irritating feature ("It's time to play Find The Cursor!") and I 
> tried to avoid using it whenever possible.  The only sensible way to use 255 
> characters on a line is to use a display that can accommodate them all at 
> once.
 
That's a display issue, not an editor issue.  Sometimes I encounter
text files from the outside, with line lengths exceeding 80 or even
255 characters.  Why should a good editor puke at such a text file?
It shouldn't of course, at least not if it's any good.  And the best
editor in this respect is Epsilon: it's able to handle even a
multi-mebabyte text file consisting of one single line of text!  Yes,
this is an extreme case, but it shows that there's not one single
text file that Epsilon cannot handle (OK, there's probably a 4 GByte
limit somewhere, but if we assume our text file is smaller than 4
GBytes, Epsilon will be able to handle it).
 
>>> That notwithstanding, if there's a more usable, more useful, better designed 
>>> and more efficient general-purpose application than AW5.1 around I don't know
>>> what it is.
>> 
>> Pick any word processor which allows more than 78 chars/line.....  I
>> would certainly not call a word processor imposing such a 78-char
>> limit as "most usable, most useful, best designed".....
> 
> Never used AppleWorks, have you?
 
Nope ... I've played with it one or twice but obviously I wasn't
impressed, or else I would nave continued using it.  Now I hardly
remember anything about it.
 
> But then it was designed for the typical home user.
 
Perhaps you should try to talk about it with a "typical home user"
rather than me then?
 
-- 
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