Hi Andrew,
Sure this is an XY question, but the question for the OP is, in what
way does outputting postscript simplify your workflow? What are you
trying to achieve?
If you look at this list and many others, people ask questions because
they are puzzled or stumped, and may not always ask the most pertinent
question, perfectly phrased and in precise context. I think this is
totally forgivable. Labelling queries XY may not be the most helpful
response when people are just seeking answers and floundering. Go easy
on them. :-)
Since you wrote something similar yesterday to me:
Yes, but support lists and forums consist of a very large percentage
of XY problems due to their very nature. I always ask people 'what is
the real question?'.
I'd like to ask for clarification: In both cases, Jean as well as I
wrote sentences of a similar structure:
Jean: "Bottom line: this may be an XY question. Why do you want to
generate PostScript in the first place?"
Lukas: "But your question seems sounds like an xy problem
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem): What do you want to achieve
exactly?"
So, neither I nor (I'm sure of that) Jean intended to use the label "XY
question" as a way to castigate the OP. For me, it's an - admittedly
geeky (hence the Wikipedia link) - succinct way of saying: We probably
could give you better help if we had a fuller picture of the fundamental
problem you want to solve. Hence the followup questions: "Why do you
want to Generate PostScript in the first place?" resp. "What do you want
to achieve exactly?"
Since we're both not English native speakers, there may be a problem of
missing the appropriate tonality involved. I'm positive that Jean didn't
mean to say "that's not a good question, go away" any more than I did.
Was this what our responses sounded like for a native speaker?
Lukas
