6 May
2002
6 May
'02
4:18 p.m.
On Monday 06 May 2002 20:18, you wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2002, Raymond Moyers wrote:
> Unix, for years, shipped with a editor nobody could use
> and backspace key that did not work, and seemed rigged
Try "stty erase ^H" The ^H is the
backspace key. And vi is a prince
among text editors. It rocks.
Well, take it as i intended, today its not an issue, and perhaps
the pressure of the free *nix systems had a part in the vendors
cleaning things up
Today the backspace key will work at least on most proprietary
Unix.
Face it, in user interface polish, the stuff written by those that
care and the code they gave for free is light years superior to all
the cruft written by the OS vendors, seemingly by people with no
more interest in their product than "this is what i do inbetween
weekends"
If Sun IBM and a few others had their way the standard interface
for Unix would be CDE, that is just as crappy a "no-design"
as winblows where the closer you look the less you can decern
what their goal was.
Uber-crap like this is what happens when marketing mentality
invades the creative space where it belongs as much as
an airboat prop on a submarine.
the early linux distro creators bundled with the base a choice
of editors and a default shell where all the familiar keys worked
and these two tiny little things, i assert droped the barrier to entry
low enough that a newbie was no longer flogged into abandoning
his quest of discovery short of discovering the power lurking
within.
OSX for the Macs is perhaps taking it to the next level, sure
its a sucky microkernel and not the best example of a Unix
but it will at least keep the people close enough that they
should and will discover the awesome power of the
architecture lurking underneath all the pretty frosting.
Raymond
"An OS without source is like buying a car with the
hood locked, where only the car company has the key,
you dont need to be a mechanic to gain benifit from free
access to your engine compartment"