Gems from uk.comp.sys.mac

Gems

Gems

Advocacy & Proselytization

Gareth John

Re: Help me choose my next mac...

3CB62A1A.5AF79CB8@btinternet.com

Fri, 12 Apr 2002 00:26:51 +0000 (UTC)

Rowland McDonnell wrote:

> 
> (psst...  but I bet you do text formatting, don't you?  Now there's a
> use for the power)

Steady on, now Rowland. I've been warned about this. It starts with a
little harmless fun, fooling around with a bit of italic and bold on the
weekends. 

Soon Truetype's not good enough, and I'll be doing Type 1 fonts,
PostScript and before long Multiple Masters. Bye bye word processing,
hello Quark.

You're standing there trying to sell me LaTex aren't you - and being so
brazenly public about it.

[long snip for effect]

> 
> Ah, but there is a solution: grab yerself MacOS X and look at all the
> exciting (La)TeXing stuff that's being done for it.
> http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/tools.html should have some pointers -
> and if you think that there's no point in unleashing the power of the
> fastest Mac on text formatting, think again: I've got a 400MHz G4 and it
> takes up to 15-30 seconds to format some documents I've worked on lately
> and longer if I want 'em in pdf form.  *Far* too slow in my book - more
> speed is always good and I for one have a use for it (for those who
> don't know, TeX does worthwhile things with all those CPU cycles - once
> TeX the program has fired up, you can be reasonably sure that you're
> using close to the theoretical minimum clock ticks per job and the
> output quality reflects the number crunching that's gone into it).

Breathtaking salesmanship. Scandalous. Almost irresistible. 

By the way, it sounds as though my far more conventional text formatting
work (done in word processors on a slower Mac) doesn't take nearly as
long as what you describe. Presumably this LaTeX malarkey is very
inefficiently programmed?

[Ducks for cover behind RPG] 
		

Tim Auton

Re: NS 8.0 Beta available

e0at51t7f1230ohekj4kqpb6gjerqicgbh@4ax.com

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 18:48:49 +0100

Woody wrote:
[snip]
>That wraps me round the the 'what do you like about the mac that the PC
>hasn't got. Menu bars - should be at the top rather than taking up space
>on every window.

It's not just space, but consistency and the infinitely high buttons.
The edge of the screen is a good place for things. SO WHY DON'T MY
FUCKING WINDOWS SNAP TO IT YOU BASTARD ACROBAT POXY F*ING OS WITH NO
MAXIMISE COCK WANK BALLS ARSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been reading PDF datasheets all week and I've missed that
3-pixels-fron-the-edge scrollbar just once too often. I could write
something to fix it, be pleased to note everybody seemed to use it,
then be dismayed that I somehow only managed to sell 3 copies as
shareware for the bargain price of $79.99. But Apple would just pinch
it, give it a French name, get sued by the people who used the French
name first, then give it a worse French name. In response I'd have to
have a baby so I could write a blog about how evil Apple are and how
they are stealing food from my baby, while simultaneously ordering a
new G5 and flaming Microsoft for being evil on
alt.comp.repetetive.advocacy. I believe this is the standard way to
get features added to OS X, but I don't like blogs.

Ahem. I'm fine now, honest.


Tim