Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!mimsy!tove.umd.edu!folta
From: folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Text file madness: diagnosis & prescription.
Summary: UNIX thoughts
Message-ID: <21673@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 90 16:43:27 GMT
References: <2706@aecom.yu.edu> <5900@ncar.ucar.edu> <1998@eric.mpr.ca> <5915@ncar.ucar.edu> <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Reply-To: folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta)
Distribution: usa
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 29

In article <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu> tonyrich@titanic.cs.wisc.edu (Anthony Rich) writes:
"Sure, it's nice to have the flexibility in a Unix-like system to process
"textfiles in virtually any program, but one penalty is that every program
"has to start with data that's in least-common-denominator form (raw text).

I was thinking about this the other day.  One of the things that propelled
UNIX forward was its elegant concept of filters and pipes.  UNIX started with
(and still almost exclusively uses) a command-line interface, so the idea
of pipes--though brilliant--was easy to implement: a program's output can be
sent to another program instead of the user.

This (and the fact that the original UNIX output to a teletype) pushed UNIX
to give very terse output... While users might like more readable output,
that would "gum up" filters with a lot of extraneous information.

So... It seems that pipes might constrain the UNIX UI to stick with terse ASCII,
otherwise, you get a dichotomy: ASCII between filters, but not to the user.
There are ways around this, I guess... But UNIX does not seem to have any
non-ASCII lowest common denominators.  (For example, the Mac has MacWrite,
MacPaint, MacDraw, and maybe TIFF and AIFF as its lcd.)  Or, I guess, a whole
new set of filters need to be made?

PLEASE!  I am not trying to expand a DOS/Mac war into a UNIX/Mac war.  I
am just cogitating on whether some of UNIX's strengths might hold it back now.
(I have used UNIX for 10 years now, and I do like it.)
--


Wayne Folta          (folta@cs.umd.edu  128.8.128.8)