Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!iuvax!cica!ctrsol!ginosko!uunet!mstan!jordan From: jordan@Morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Meat and Potatoe Programs Message-ID: <320@zooks.Morgan.COM> Date: 24 Jul 89 18:01:33 GMT References: Reply-To: jordan@Morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) Organization: Morgan Stanley and Co., NY, NY Lines: 34 J Greely writes: Any profession where excitement revolves around spreadsheets and COBOL deserves a little disappointment. [ ... ] I don't do spreadsheets, since I can do what I need faster with emacs, awk, and perl. If you can "do what you need" with those tools, you don't have the needs of other users. I think the point stands that a good spreadsheet is needed in UNIX land (and i'm not talking about sc). If I could open an Excel window on a NeXT, I would throw my MacII out the window. I'm a programmer, not a "business type" (where did COBOL get into this discussion? talk about a stereotypical attitude) but I have some serious needs that only get filled by a spreadsheet. It's an integral part of my computing at times, and I wish it were on the same machine that I do everything else on. Sure, I don't use document-preparation tools all the time in my work either, but how many of you have asked for better tools in that arena as well? Now, TeX seems to be getting there, and there are several decent previewers out there now, but when will we see a WYSIWYG word-processor? "I don't do spreadsheets, since I am used to the lack of support UNIX gives me" If you think about it a little bit, tbl really makes you want a spreadsheet, pic makes you want a paint program, TeX makes you want to use fonts on-screen, etc. Ignoring "those" applications is a pin-head move.