[Mono-list] Editor frustration. -- Communication Annoyances

[Jay Freeman (saurik)]

I really don't understand how you mis-understood this so badly.  I don't
believe on Unix on the desktop.  The reasons behind this are large, complex,
and have nothing to do with editors.  I didn't claim they have anything to
do with editors.  I only claimed that this is why I use Windows.  You pulled
a point made in a second e-mail that was only slightly related and for some
reason assumed that one must have followed to the other.  At this point, I
no longer feel bad getting a little personal and saying:  read the damned
sentence, if you don't understand it the first time, try it a second time.
I know you saw the sentence (as you replied to it), so make an effort to
understand it.  Let's spell out the entire chain here in something simple,
approaching propositional logic (but being a little more verbose so the
meaning continues):

I don't believe in Linix on the desktop (reasoning unimportant (!!), to
strengthen the point I originally made, I don't believe in Unix on the
desktop in general, not just Linux... although, as I mentioned before, I
like Mac OS X).  Hence, I use Windows on all of my desktop computers (as
there is no Mac OS X on Intel, this point was confusing, but was in a
removable clause).  Hence, I am always working with consoles over ssh.
Hence, it is important to me to have an editor that does syntax highlighting
on a console.  Hence, I don't like Emacs.  HENCE, I use vim (although these
last two points can be rearranged into different configurations).

These two comments weren't even in the same e-mail.  The first e-mail
started on the syntax highlighting point, and then followed to the final
point.  That should have been painfully clear as it was really the only
logical chain within the entire message.  I later sent a second e-mail that
started on the first point and continued to the second.  I didn't even make
the connection between the second and third point... not _anywhere_ that can
be located in the previous two e-mails.  I am, however, showing it in my
propositions above so you can clearly see how it fits together and where you
made your inference error.

There seems to be a very, very large communication gap between us.  I
really, really don't understand how you possibly could have inferred the
chain of reasoning you did, which makes it very difficult for me to work
around this error by asking myself "what is the other person going to
understand from the content of this e-mail".  Seriously, I cannot stress
this point enough:  I would _like_ to understand.  Before today, my only
theory is that if I bring up two topics in the same e-mail you always,
ALWAYS believe that they must be logically connected in the sense that the
first one must lead to the second one.  From previous misunderstandings,
this predicted the problem quite well.  Here, however, here we have a case
where two entirely seperate e-mails made two points that were only
semi-related and you _still_ managed to infer some logic between them that
flows from the first to the second (although here the logic connection, the
one that I wasn't actually trying to use for anything, flowed from the
second to the first).

You got the logic entirely backwards... I really don't see what else I can
say other than "what the hell are you babbling about?!?".  I would have
preferred to keep _this_ e-mail private, but I now have to respond to your
comment which I frankly find insulting and doesn't seem to come from
anywhere grounded in my original e-mails.  If you are going to go forward
and make claims that the other person is part of some larger problem, you
should add the kind of disclaimer that I do that you are sorry if you
misunderstood something as damned if you didn't here.

Now, to make this explicit, this is what is called a side point.  I am about
to totally transition into something that will reference earlier material,
but will make no inferences from it.  It is not an extension of something I
have previously said, and should not in any way be used to better understand
other comments.  I hope that was explicit enough:

To make the point, I _have_ used Linux with X, and it doesn't solve the
problem.  Frankly, I'd rather use the console so I don't have to feel as if
I have to constantly bitch about all of the problems with X.  I could get
into them, which cover everything from the basic architecture of X itself to
the development model that applications use to target it all the way up to a
failure of common standards (de facto or otherwise) for application
organization and a general lack of robustness, not in stability but in UI
aspects (such as what items support right clicks, what windows get focus at
what point), that fail to come close to what I have come to expect from Mac
and Windows, but the e-mail would be too long (many, many pages), take too
much time to write (I can't just _waste_ my time trying to tell people
things that are obviously wrong), and I have no real interest in fixing them
getting fixed anyway (as I am perfectly happy with my current OSs).

Now, it's important to note that, regardless of the above statement, I am
not _against_ Linux on the desktop, which you might infer by connecting the
strength of that statement with my previous e-mail about using Windows (I
wouldn't make that connection, but I'm starting to believe that you might).
If someone else (such as you) wishes to use Linux on your desktop, by all
means go ahead:  you might not be looking for the same things in an
interface that I am.  The real confusion here seems to be your _assumption_
that _everyone_ should like Linux on the desktop if they just understood it
well enough, hence the _need_ to find a bad reason for it.

Sincerely,
Jay Freeman (saurik)
saurik@saurik.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel de Icaza" <miguel@ximian.com>
To: "Jay Freeman (saurik)" <saurik@saurik.com>
Cc: "mono-list" <mono-list@ximian.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Mono-list] Editor frustration.


>
> > When I have the text file on my local box (which is always Windows, I
still
> > don't believe in Linux on the desktop, although I am really eyeing Mac
OS
> > X... too bad it doesn't run on Intel...)
>
> I do not understand Jay.  You complain that syntax coloring only works
> on X, and not in the ncurses-based mode version.  So how come you do
> not believe on Linux on the desktop?
>
> Maybe you should try Linux with X and Emacs with X?
>
> No wonder people are confused about Linux on the desktop.  We are not
> suggesting people to work from the 80x25 console ;-)
>
> Miguel.