Congratulations to everybody on the success of the free CDs. A couple of opinions about the CD for next time.
I'm not sure, but it looked to me like there might have been space on the CDs (which seem to be the 80min/700MB type) to squeeze on maxima after all. My Calc students (Calc I and Calc II) would be more interested in this than Octave, though I'd hope that both could be included. This may be another 40 or so students per year that might be drawn towards open source. (PS: emacs also integrates well with maxima, if you'll pardon the pun.) Although it seems important to have things like OpenOffice as a matter of principal to tell people that they can avoid many Microsoft products, as a practical matter most windows users would probably continue to use the products they already have. On the balance, I'm not sure as a practical matter whether all the space is worth it; we could promote still more free software with that space. Could I suggest including (a real version of) emacs next time? There are different windows versions on http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/, including a "barebin" version of only 4.2 M. (I don't know what xemacs/setup.exe is on the CD, but it can't be the real thing, I think, in only 185K.) There are also fuller versions if space would permit. It is certainly one of the first programs I have installed on the occasions when I have been stuck using windows; a good fraction of the unix/linux world probably feels the same way. Emacs also does some (for me) common editing jobs that I don't think vi does; e.g., except for pc-write for dos, I don't know of another program that does such good job editing text in columns, so might be of interest even to hard core vi users. I also regularly use the emacs outline mode, etc. At any rate, not every emacs user will find it appealing to have just vi. Todd ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
