Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ames!zodiac!jtn
From: jtn@zodiac.ADS.COM (John Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Text file madness on the Mac.
Message-ID: <10307@zodiac.ADS.COM>
Date: 6 Jan 90 22:37:30 GMT
References: <2706@aecom.yu.edu> <5900@ncar.ucar.edu> <1998@eric.mpr.ca> <5915@ncar.ucar.edu> <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
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Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mt. View, CA (415) 960-7300
Lines: 63

In article <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> mls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon) writes:
>
>The defensiveness of Mac fanatics about the oddities of the system is
>obscuring the point.  It is particularly obnoxious to be told that all
>applications "should" create files with the signature of Teach Text,
>given that essentially none of them do, and given that what I might
>*want* to do with a randomly created file is *not* necessarily page
>through it.
>
>The example of reading an arbitrary file is just that, an example of a
>much larger general problem.  If I have a file I may want to use it in
>a number of different ways, totally unconstrained by the file's origin
>or by my intentions when I create the file.
>
>On my Mac (of which I am quite fond, by the way) an application *either*
>
>   - creates files in a special form, saying "mine, mine;" [like an excited
>     and possessive Daffy Duck] "nobody else can use this!" -- unless they
>     build in an infinity of "conversion" routines or one has a program/DA
>     doing nothing but conversions
>
>*or*
>
>   - creates files in a "generic" format like TEXT or MacPaint or suchlike;
>     and then *nobody* can use it, without going through some such nonsense
>     as locating an application, invoking it in some utterly useless state
>     closing *that* state and hunting through some menus to get back to the
>     file you started with and are interested in.
>
>May I point out that 5 years after the introduction of the Mac, it's still
>regarded as a neat new commercial utility, heavily advertised in the pages
>of the Mac rags, to have something that can actually *open* any given file.
>Sure there are lots of ways to do this, some quite old.  What is bizarre
>is the *need* for it.
>
>You can specify an arbitrary file, and get the application (if any) it is
>associated with.  You can specify an arbitrary application and get any files
>it (thinks it) is prepared to cope with.  But you cannot specify an arbitary
>file and an arbitrary application TOGETHER.  A new application may know all
>sorts of neat conversions to operate on earlier kinds of output; the older
>applications are then practically guaranteed to be unable to cope with the
>output of the new one.
>
>The Mac is wonderful for all sorts of one-off, custom jury-rigged situations
>and for a small set of highly stylized standard applications.  What it is
>*very* bad at is generalization and abstraction -- areas where one has to
>step *outside* the details and deal with them "algebraically" (as in the
>regular expression matching of filenames or of text in a file or of patterns
>of output in the intermediate stages of a complex operation.)  The Mac is
>slick (and often fun) on the immediate details, but every detail has to be
>dealt with one at a time.
>-- 
>Michael L. Siemon		I say "You are gods, sons of the
>cucard!dasys1!mls		Most High, all of you; nevertheless
>att!sfbat!mls			you shall die like men, and fall
>standard disclaimer		like any prince."   Psalm 82:6-7


-- 

John T. Nelson			UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn
Advanced Decision Systems	Internet:  jtn@potomac.ads.com
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