On Sun, 10 Dec 2000 01:00:40 +0100, Remco de Korte wrote...
> That seems more like a problem of deciding whose 'fault' something is, not
> exactly an inherent statement about quality.
> If someone sent me a letter in Chines I could blame him for making it unreadable
> to me or I could blame myself for not being able to read Chines but it says
> nothing about the quality of the Chines language or my own language. Or does it?
> Let's see, is English a better language then for instance French or Latin? Why
> would it be that French or Latin were 'standard' languages sometime among
> certain groups of people. Because they were supposed to be better at that time?

'Scuse me guys, but could you take this to povray.off-topic, as it was 
exactly this sort of argument which caused me to abandon said group.

This is not aimed at anyone in particular, so please don't feel 
victimised, Remco :)  Instead it's aimed at all those discussing OS pro's 
and cons in an animation newsgroup.

Thank you for your time.

Bye for now,
     Jamie.

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Jamie Davison wrote:
> 
> This is not aimed at anyone in particular, so please don't feel
> victimised, Remco :)

I don't need you to feel victimised ;)

Seriously: I agree with you, I suggested something similar before, but then I
wouldn't be able to follow the discussion any longer (whose loss?) so as long as
it stayed here I 'contributed'.

Cheers!

Remco

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Bill DeWitt <bde### [at] cflrrcom> wrote:
:     Windows is the standard,

  Standard of what?

: evidenced by the way Mac tried for so long to
: supplant it but then finally became Windows compatible, not to mention Linux
: windowing systems...

  Well, with the same arguments one could say that C64 is the standard.
You can run C64 programs in almost every system because there are C64
emulators available for them.

  The fact that there's support for one system in another system doesn't
mean that the emulated system is some kind of "standard".

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Post a reply to this message

Rick [Kitty5] <ric### [at] kitty5com> wrote:
: what would you suggest?, we all go linux and back to the days of a GUI
: sitting on top of a command line OS?

  You clearly have no idea what Unix is.

  Unix is not a command line OS. Unix is not a graphical OS.
  The Unix operating system is a core which handles several things an operating
system has to handle (like processes, resources, memory and so on). You can
use the Unix operating systems through several user interfaces. One of these
interfaces is the command line shell. Another one can be a graphical windowing
system.
  There are even Unix machines out there which do not have ANY user interface,
not even a command line shell.

  The X windowing system does not rely on the command line shell. It's far
independent of any shell. It uses the operating system directly.
  You can start X from a command line shell. You can start a command line
shell from X. You don't need one to use the other, though.

  I think that you just have the so-called command-line-fobia-syndrome.

: Windows is a major advance in that it has made computers accessible to the
: masses, I don't see any of the competition having anything like that kind of
: impact.

  Not true. MacOS was the first operating system which made computers
accessible to the masses.

  And even if we say that, we have to admit that Windows is a big step
backwards in versatility and stability.
  The instability of Windows is well known. Everyone agrees with that.
  As for verstatility, you just can't do anything with Windows. It doesn't
offer you any good tools for making anything advanced. Only simple (which
doesn't mean they are small) tools are given to make very simple tasks
(eg. in file management). But Windows doesn't offer any powerful tools
for eg. managing your files.
  For example, if I want to make a small CGI program in my home page which,
for example, handles guestbook entries (and creates a page to show all
the entries to the world), that's quite easily done in Unix. You need about
10 lines of script code to do that.
  However, trying to do the same in Windows is a lot harder. You'll probably
to use some programming language (and of course Windows doesn't give you
any compiler, what a surprise) and mostly external programs (not found in
Windows itself).

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:3a339c8e@news.povray.org...
> Bill DeWitt <bde### [at] cflrrcom> wrote:
> :     Windows is the standard,
>
>   Standard of what?

    That is the question isn't it? Those objecting seem to assume that we
mean standard of excellence, then call us stupid because of that. It is just
a standard, like 1/4x20 threads on a bolt. You rarely see 33/64x19 threads
on a bolt. Why? Because you have to have standards. If you are going to make
an OS, you should use some standard to compare it to, you can either say it
is faster than Windows or slower, easier than Windows or harder, more
efficient or less. You could also use UNIX, as Linux does when they compare
the various distributions, ie: It is closer to UNIX or further away in this
or that quality. Just because you have 1/4x20 bolts doesn't mean you can't
have 3/4x10s.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> 
>   For example, if I want to make a small CGI program in my home page which,
> for example, handles guestbook entries (and creates a page to show all
> the entries to the world), that's quite easily done in Unix. You need about
> 10 lines of script code to do that.
>   However, trying to do the same in Windows is a lot harder. You'll probably
> to use some programming language (and of course Windows doesn't give you
> any compiler, what a surprise) and mostly external programs (not found in
> Windows itself).

While I mostly agree with you, there are two statements above that need
clarification:

First: shell scripting IS a programming language.

Second: Unix doesn't have built-in compilers either.  What you should
have said is that most Unix packages, usually come with a bundled C
compiler.  But not all of them do.  SCO, for example, doesn't unless you
buy the "advanced" package.

-- 
Francois Labreque | Rimmer: "Let's go to red alert!"
    flabreque     | Kryten: "Are you sure, Sir?  You realize it
        @         |          actually means changing the bulb!"
   videotron.ca

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> 
> Rick [Kitty5] <ric### [at] kitty5com> wrote:
> : what would you suggest?, we all go linux and back to the days of a GUI
> : sitting on top of a command line OS?
> 
>   You clearly have no idea what Unix is.
> 

That's me 8)

>   Unix is not a command line OS. Unix is not a graphical OS.

I think that goes for most OS's. Confusing the interface with the OS can mess up
the discussion severely. With regard to Windows, I've heard and read several
times that Windows isn't a real OS because it's just a graphical shell on DOS. I
think that that has become less true with every new version but still talking
about the shell saying it is stolen from Apple says little about the OS.

>   The Unix operating system is a core which handles several things an operating
> system has to handle (like processes, resources, memory and so on). You can
> use the Unix operating systems through several user interfaces. One of these
> interfaces is the command line shell. Another one can be a graphical windowing
> system.

I agree and again I think you can apply that on more OS's.

>   There are even Unix machines out there which do not have ANY user interface,
> not even a command line shell.

I think it would be possible to rig a Windows machine to look that way (there
are several boot options already).
> 
>   The X windowing system does not rely on the command line shell. It's far
> independent of any shell. It uses the operating system directly.
>   You can start X from a command line shell. You can start a command line
> shell from X. You don't need one to use the other, though.
> 
>   I think that you just have the so-called command-line-fobia-syndrome.
> 
> : Windows is a major advance in that it has made computers accessible to the
> : masses, I don't see any of the competition having anything like that kind of
> : impact.
> 
>   Not true. MacOS was the first operating system which made computers
> accessible to the masses.
> 

Hm, I was also thinking about a Commodore, Spectrum or MSX (or similar).

>   And even if we say that, we have to admit that Windows is a big step
> backwards in versatility and stability.

Compared to what?

>   The instability of Windows is well known. Everyone agrees with that.
>   As for verstatility, you just can't do anything with Windows. 

Teehee 8)

> It doesn't
> offer you any good tools for making anything advanced. 

Bwaahaa!

> Only simple (which
> doesn't mean they are small) tools are given to make very simple tasks
> (eg. in file management). But Windows doesn't offer any powerful tools
> for eg. managing your files.
>   For example, if I want to make a small CGI program in my home page which,
> for example, handles guestbook entries (and creates a page to show all
> the entries to the world), that's quite easily done in Unix. You need about
> 10 lines of script code to do that.

Now that's a very important thing! Handling a guestbook in 10 lines!
You should have a look at Steve Gibsons site and then come back here and repeat
this.
(http://grc.com)

>   However, trying to do the same in Windows is a lot harder. You'll probably
> to use some programming language (and of course Windows doesn't give you
> any compiler, what a surprise) and mostly external programs (not found in
> Windows itself).

You could use assembler if you wanted to make it real hard on yourself, or use
the WinApi to make it a bit easier on yourself (but still get quite small
programs) or you could use one of the several development platforms which hand
you a bunch of functionality on a silver platter (resulting in big files).
This way you can do much more then handle a guestbook entry, with a program that
will perhaps have a couple of hundred lines of visible code (and thousands you
don't need to bother about) while you only have to do a few mouseclicks and
enter a handful parameters. 
This still doesn't really say anything about the underlying OS, though...

> 
> --
> main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
> ):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Kind regards,

Remco

(PS I've put the follow-up to off-topic so this'll be my last contribution in
this part of the thread)

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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
: First: shell scripting IS a programming language.

  Well, strictly speaking, yes.
  The most important difference with common programming languages is that
the shell script is very closely related to the Unix system and its tools.
Using unix tools (usually separate little programs, sometimes shell builtin
commands) is very natural and straightforward using a shell script.
  In most programming languages this isn't as easy. Usually programming
languages are quite independent from the system and so, calling system tools
is not as easy.

: Second: Unix doesn't have built-in compilers either.  What you should
: have said is that most Unix packages, usually come with a bundled C
: compiler.  But not all of them do.  SCO, for example, doesn't unless you
: buy the "advanced" package.

  Well, it's more an exception than a rule that in a randomly chosen Unix
there's no cc command... :)

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Post a reply to this message

Remco de Korte <rem### [at] onwijscom> wrote:
:>   Not true. MacOS was the first operating system which made computers
:> accessible to the masses.

: Hm, I was also thinking about a Commodore, Spectrum or MSX (or similar).

  Commodore, Spectrum and MSX didn't have easy-to-use graphical user
interfaces. MacOS does. I don't know about AmigaOS.

:>   And even if we say that, we have to admit that Windows is a big step
:> backwards in versatility and stability.

: Compared to what?

  To Unix, what else?
  Windows is still incapable of making things that unix was able to do
in the 70's. Not even Windows NT (although NT is a lot better in this matter).

:> It doesn't
:> offer you any good tools for making anything advanced. 

: Bwaahaa!

  Why do you laugh?
  It doesn't even offer tools for simple things.
  For example, suppose that I want to replace a string in every .txt file
with another string.
  In unix? One simple command. In Windows? I don't know how you can do it
(without using external programs). Perhaps you can, but I don't know how.

: Now that's a very important thing! Handling a guestbook in 10 lines!

  You are sticking to details.
  The important part was not the 10 lines. The important part was that you
can make it easily with a short code. You don't need specialized 3rd party
tools nor 3rd party compilers for that. There are more than enough tools
in unix itself to do this. That's the point.

: (but still get quite small programs)

  I wasn't talking about the size of the program. I was talking about how
easy it is to do it with the tools offered by the OS.
  Please understand what I'm talking about and don't stick to details.

: This way you can do much more then handle a guestbook entry, with a program that
: will perhaps have a couple of hundred lines of visible code (and thousands you
: don't need to bother about) while you only have to do a few mouseclicks and
: enter a handful parameters. 

  But that's the whole point.
  You need to make quite a lot of work to get a simple program. You need a
3rd party compiler and you have to make a several hundreds of lines long
program for making something that is very simple and limited.
  What if you want to modify the program afterwards? You'll have to go to
the source code, modify it and recompile. Quite a lot of trouble.

: (PS I've put the follow-up to off-topic so this'll be my last contribution in
: this part of the thread)

povray.binaries.off-topic? Is that a new group I'm not aware of?

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> 
> Remco de Korte <rem### [at] onwijscom> wrote:
> :>   Not true. MacOS was the first operating system which made computers
> :> accessible to the masses.
> 
> : Hm, I was also thinking about a Commodore, Spectrum or MSX (or similar).
> 
>   Commodore, Spectrum and MSX didn't have easy-to-use graphical user
> interfaces. MacOS does. I don't know about AmigaOS.

Accessability is not all about GUI.

> 
> :>   And even if we say that, we have to admit that Windows is a big step
> :> backwards in versatility and stability.
> 
> : Compared to what?
> 
>   To Unix, what else?

Oh, wow...

>   Windows is still incapable of making things that unix was able to do
> in the 70's. Not even Windows NT (although NT is a lot better in this matter).
> 
> :> It doesn't
> :> offer you any good tools for making anything advanced.
> 
> : Bwaahaa!
> 
>   Why do you laugh?
>   It doesn't even offer tools for simple things.
>   For example, suppose that I want to replace a string in every .txt file
> with another string.
>   In unix? One simple command. In Windows? I don't know how you can do it
> (without using external programs). Perhaps you can, but I don't know how.
> 

There are two things to consider:

every .txt file with another string. I also do other things with my system.

no builtin tools for a lot of tasks but the workd is crawling with applications
to do things you couldn't even dream of, not only for Windows (though they are
probably the most common) but for all sorts of OS.

> : Now that's a very important thing! Handling a guestbook in 10 lines!
> 
>   You are sticking to details.

Perhaps, but you're using those details as arguments.

>   The important part was not the 10 lines. The important part was that you
> can make it easily with a short code. You don't need specialized 3rd party
> tools nor 3rd party compilers for that. There are more than enough tools
> in unix itself to do this. That's the point.

Point taken.
> 
> : (but still get quite small programs)
> 
>   I wasn't talking about the size of the program. I was talking about how
> easy it is to do it with the tools offered by the OS.
>   Please understand what I'm talking about and don't stick to details.

That's what I referred to in the rest of my reply: you have several options,
from very easy to very hard. Want to make a database-application? Use Delphi,
everything is already there.

> 
> : This way you can do much more then handle a guestbook entry, with a program that
> : will perhaps have a couple of hundred lines of visible code (and thousands you
> : don't need to bother about) while you only have to do a few mouseclicks and
> : enter a handful parameters.
> 
>   But that's the whole point.
>   You need to make quite a lot of work to get a simple program.

No, you don't! All of the work has already been done. You just have to put the
piece together with a coupl eof simple movements.

 You need a
> 3rd party compiler and you have to make a several hundreds of lines long
> program for making something that is very simple and limited.
>   What if you want to modify the program afterwards? You'll have to go to
> the source code, modify it and recompile. Quite a lot of trouble.

It seems to me you don't know what you're talking about.
> 
> : (PS I've put the follow-up to off-topic so this'll be my last contribution in
> : this part of the thread)
> 
> povray.binaries.off-topic? Is that a new group I'm not aware of?

No, that was a mistake. I've tried it again this time. Why didn't you? Wanted to
nitpick on a detail perhaps?
> 
> --
> main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
> ):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Cheers?

Remco

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