Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!uwvax!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!thelake!steve
From: steve@thelake.UUCP (Steve Yelvington)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: FORM, nice but...
Message-ID: <1103891319123100@thelake.UUCP>
Date: 3 Dec 89 19:19:12 GMT
References: <274@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve
Followup-To: comp.sys.atari.st
Organization: Otter Lake Leisure Society (MN-USA)
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In article <274@watserv1.waterloo.edu>,
     bmaraldo@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Commander Brett Maraldo) writes ... 

> ... the manual lacks 
>inclusive speech and inclusive speech is important as we attempt to include
>women in our language (and ultimately as recognized members of society).

Demanding that ANY written material be "politically correct" in the mind
of every reader is impossible. And expecting documentation to actively
serve an arbitrary set of external political goals is silly. Docs aren't
political essays, and I surely hope they stay that way.

I have a different problem with the Form documentation: TeX. Seriously, is
a 430-kilobyte DVI file an efficient method of distributing docs?
Especially since the number of STs actually running TeX is mighty small.

I'm considering tossing the whole Form package into the trashcan rather
than forwarding it to the Minnesota Atari ST user group. Think about it:
Some semi-serious user spends an hour or so downloading and unarchiving
the whole thing, only to discover that he (or she) can't even read the
docs without obtaining several megabytes' worth of TeX crud and a college
education in TeXwizardry. I'm not flaming anybody, just pointing out a
practical problem. At some point the pain-in-the-butt factor exceeds the
utility.

On a (sort of) related subject, does anybody else find the shar'ed source
code in comp.sources.atari.st to be a constant source of trouble? 

The shar format doubtless is an excellent solution for Un*x systems, but
for non-Un*x sites, there is just enough variation in the formats to
frustrate any attempts at automated unpacking. One of the TOS-based
shar utilities that I use here has a bug that makes it double lines.
Another can't handle shell archives that do not have a strippable
character (usually X) prepended to each line.

I almost always wind up having to repair the sharred sources or the
resulting files with a text editor, and often it's easier just to split up
the shell archive manually with MicroEMACS. Arggh! UUDecoding a .ZOO file
is *so* much simpler.

   -- Steve Yelvington, up at the lake in Minnesota        
  ... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve             (UUCP)