Survex (interface expectation)

[David Gibson]

In article "Survex (interface expectation)" in <!survex>, on Sat, 13 Jul
2002 Andy Waddington on Survey stuff <Survex@pennine.demon.co.uk> wrote

>The "View" word processor, for example,
>later developed into ViewPS by Neil Raine at Acorn, produced, in 1986,
>a word-processed (caving) journal on a BBC Micro + Apple laser writer which
>still looks better than anything I can get out of Word (TM).

Andy - you sound like an Arts Graduate who is proud of the fact that he
doesnt know anything about science or maths and considers it beneath
him. You went to Cambridge fucking University for godsake and if you are
unable or unwilling to exercise your brain in learning what *everybody*
else does then ... um .. I dont know, be quiet or something.

> I realise that Word is without doubt
>the worst piece of software in the universe

Actually, Word is very good.  But I boast: a commercial publisher who is
very competent in electronic publishing said to me once that I was the
most expert person at Word that he'd ever met[*] and I could get it to
do amazing things.   And I dont have a Word manual :-)

 [*] the fact that there are so many people who no *nothing* about Word
probably skews the statistic a bit. But typing 20 space characters
instead of setting up a tab is hardly a 'Windows' problem ;-)

>The problem is how to get over to users of Survex that this is *not* an
>appropriate idiom for cave survey software. Users need to understand about
>cave surveying

All we're talking about is that when you load up Survex there should be
a File menu with options for New, Open, Edit, Save, Save As, and a file
history list.  That doesnt seem that contentious to me.

>In my (contentious ? Moi ?) opinion, users who don't want to read a manual
>and can't use a command line interface, should probably be actively
>encouraged to keep out of the data processing side of cave surveying :-)

If that were - inasmuch as it could be - the *official* view of the
Survex developers then I would be rather dismayed and - were I to have
more free time - I would consider it my duty to campaign against the lot
of you. :-)
-- 
David Gibson