Re: concensus on removing TeX and Emacs from standard
On Sun, Jan 02, 2000 at 01:37:26PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 31, 1999 at 05:32:30PM -0800, Robert Woodcock wrote:
> > > > Hello, I think TeX and Emacs should no longer be standard.
> > > What would you say has changed since this was put in policy initially?
> > Well, to be honest, I wasn't a developer when it was put into policy
> > initially, but for the sake of conversation I'll assume before 1997-ish.
> > Many people use TeX's typesetting as a stopgap word processor. Now that
> > there are other very usable DFSG-free word processors around, the number
> > of people using them is dwarfing the TeX userbase.
>
> Then that would imply that TeX should probably be replaced with one of these
> other very usable DFSG-free word processors.
Yes, but first we'd have to make X standard :)
> I'm curious as to your `dwarfing' statistics, though. Especially if you
> restrict it to only DFSG-free word processors. :-/
Well, we're not about to go making non-free word processors standard.
A lot of potato users are simply typing:
apt-get install abiword gnumeric
Lo and behold, half an office suite.
> > The text editor scene really hasn't changed much since then. People who
> > used emacs in 1997 are still using emacs, people who used vi in 1997 are
> > still using vi, and new users are slowly aligning themselves one way or the
> > other.
>
> Which would be an argument to make emacs standard even if it weren't
> already.
Please explain how you are taking my paragraph above and spinning it into an
argument for making emacs standard.
I would find humor value in it.
> > My argument is that the number of emacs users who would be annoyed to
> > specifically select an emacs to install are outnumbered by the number of
> > non-emacs users who would be annoyed to specifically select emacs to
> > remove. (whew!)
>
> Why would *either* be annoyed?
>
> It, like, involves two keypresses either way. Maybe a couple more if there
> are some recommended packages as well. This isn't exactly hard labour.
They would be annoyed if they didn't take those 24 keypresses [1]
in the first place and found out that apt-get is grabbing 27MB of stuff
they didn't need or want, and furthermore is eating up a few more minutes
of their time during the package configuration stage.
[1] slash, 'emacs', enter, minus, space, enter, down, minus, slash,
'tetex', enter, minus, space, enter, down, minus
--
Robert Woodcock - rcw@debian.org
"Anybody else wanna negotiate?" -- The Fifth Element
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