On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Edward K. Ream <edream...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:23 PM, Kent Tenney <kten...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Right, and Tim's point was that Unix thrived in great part because man >> pages provided a standard tool to address exploding capability and >> complexity. >> >> The iPhone parallel doesn't become valid until the gui era. > > But we are in the gui era now, and my experience is that the need for > complex docs is a sign of design defects.
The iPhone equivalent to Unix is coding in iOS. Sure the simplicity of the device is great, but I'm guessing iOS is anything but simple, and includes tools for rapid access to details. If you live in a complex domain, the complexity needs to go somewhere, the trick is correct distribution of it. > > The contrary point of view isn't entirely invalid: consider the rst > command. It's powerful because of all the options. Still, I myself > have trouble remembering them all. > > The contrary-contrary point of view contrasts rST with LaTeX. Of > course rST is simpler, of course LaTeX is much more flexible. But > that's not the end of the story. My impression is that millenia have > been wasted worrying about stuff that doesn't matter. > > So yes, there is a tension. However, I find it difficult to believe > that *nix is a model for any kind of good design :- > > Anyway, emacs, vim, eclipse and maybe one or two others are what I > think of as my design world. I love vim, but the help system has always confounded me. > > Finally, thanks for your good-humored comments. I always enjoy them. Back atcha. > > Edward > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "leo-editor" group. > To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to leo-editor@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to leo-editor+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en.
