Re: the IBM keyboard

[rlharris@oplink.net]

On Sun, August 30, 2015 9:29 pm, David Wright wrote:
> ...
> but can hardly be considered adequate for a power-user of a
> textual application where individual commands that have been used hundreds
> of times will be typed without any conscious effort at all, rather like a
> pianist plays ornaments.

In that epoch of my career I was running Window$ (95 or 98 or whatever) --
rodent and all -- on a second machine, for typesetting with Aldus (now
Adobe) PageMaker.  The work of composition, however, was done exclusively
on a DO$ machine running Word 5.0.

This all was in the day before the advent of low-cost Ethernet with
multi-conductor cables terminated in RJ-45 connectors; back then,
networking generally was done with coaxial cable.  But nonetheless, I had
a network connecting the two machines -- "sneaker net".

So when an error by me or a blunder by PageMaker was discovered in the
typeset output, I would go back to the "master" document in Word 5.0, make
a change, and then copy the revised document file to floppy.  (I think
that, by that time, 3.5 inch floppies had become common, if not the
standard.)  Next, I would "network" the floppy to the drive of the Window$
machine, load the file into PageMaker, and typeset the document again.



So even still today I am amazed by the ability in Debian to make a
mouseless edit with EMacs, then, with a keystroke or two, switch to the
terminal and typeset with a single command, and finally, with another
keystroke, switch to the xdvi window and see the change -- all in a matter
of seconds.

Having learned PageMaker on the Macintosh and subsequently having migrated
to PageMaker on the IBM-PC, I can say from experience that (at least, back
then) PageMaker could not hold a candle to LaTeX.  LaTeX was far more
simple to use, and LaTeX produced far better quality of typesetting.

So in the end, that Y2K bug in M$ Word 5.0 turned out to be a great
blessing, and nothing less than Providential.

RLH