Is \include{subdocument} workable when that subdocument is one paragraph long and you have 1000 subdocuments in your book?
In FrameMaker, you have 'conditional text' which allows you to tag text with a condition. During publishing, you select the conditions you want shown or hidden. This allows you to have one master document to describe a series of related machines (or what have you). All WYSIWYG. Autogeneration of all sorts of lists, and a scripting language are available.
AuthorIT and other document management systems use a database. Each of your text fragments (a section or part of a section, down to a single sentence if you want) is a record in a database, and the system allows you to string these together arbitrarily. AuthorIT can output XML which allows for extensive postprocessing.
The problem I see with \include{subdocument} is that you're relying on the file system to manage your subdocuments. You can open the subdocs as separate files, but the system doesn't organize them for you on-screen, which makes it more difficult to see them in context.
Interesting. In about 13 years in the industry I've never come across a client who used it. Then again, most of our clients do very small print runs (all the way down to custom manuals for every individual machine) for large numbers of related machines. That's when you need reuse facilities.
So, what's the easy-to-use but flexible opposition that LibreOffice should be competing with?
I'll concede the point that LaTeX/LyX is probably still king for technical writing, and that there are other products aimed at people writing "pure text" - but what is a good role-model in the realm of general purpose WP/DTP-crossover?
LaTeX/LyX is a nice project, but 'king for technical writing'? Technical writing generally means user guides and other product manuals, and LaTeX is a niche player at best in that market. FrameMaker is popular, and content management systems like AuthorIT are gaining traction. This market is all about reuse of content, and LaTeX doesn't offer that, as far as I know. LaTeX is aimed more at academic publishing.
For a good role model WP/DTP package, look no further than FrameMaker:
Proper support for styles, but still accepts style overrides if need be.
A good combination of DTP (flexible page layout) and automation options for formatting.
Stability (no crashing when the document gets large).
A properly documented readable-text file format (MIF) that is the exact equivalent of its default binary file format.
Formatting that changes only when YOU want it to (Word bullets and numbering, I'm looking at you).
Templates that actually work (allowing you to copy styles from one document to another).
That mark is useless without the table that tells you what each distance represents. So on that matchstick you haven't stored data, merely a hash of that data.
Sceptics of Columbus' plan were on record as saying 'Sure you'll be able to sail around the world, when hell freezes over'. He proved them wrong (sort of), and hey presto! Ice age. Coincidence? I think not!
It's unfortunate that Stallman has allowed his ideology to blind him for Jobs' accomplishments. Yes, you can moan about walled gardens, but Steve Jobs made computing accessible to the masses. Without that, you can have all the openness you want, but only a small number of people will be able to enjoy it. I remember the bad old days. Before 1984, computers were inscrutable and required lots of training to use. The Macintosh changed all that; it made it obvious that there was a better way than the 'everyone invents their own interface' hell that existed before. This, much more than the iPhone and what have you is Jobs's lasting legacy. Those who dismiss Jobs' contribution to society as eye candy are missing the point.
Maybe Stallman's sour grapes are due to the realization that Jobs' contribution is impossible in a FOSS-only world. It's been 30 years since computers became affordable to the general public. I haven't seen much in the way of user interface innovation from the FOSS world. You need a dictator to decide on a uniform user interface, and you need a dictator to enforce that against everyone's objections.
No, never. I hibernate it instead. Saving the state of my workspace is vital, and saves lots of time. I don't really care about the time it takes to hibernate or come out of hibernation.
They do show some German artifacts (Enigma and Lorenz encoding machines) but don't go into the German side of things too deeply. IIRC they explain the design of the Enigma to some extent, but Lorenz and its brethren don't get much explanation. Of course, much of the success of Bletchley is owed to the lack of ingenuity of the German scientists and the security holes this created, allowing regular breaks into the encrypted traffic.
Enough with the moaning about Alan Turing already! Yes, he was treated awfully by the British government aftwer WW2, but this has nothing to do with Bletchley; during his tenure at Bletchley Turing was left in peace. Also, Bletchley currently houses a memorial and celebrates Turing's invaluable contribution to the codebreaking effort. What more do you want?
it was never designed to be a tourist attraction and still isn't except for those who understand what it WAS.
They may not have all the bells and whistles, but the comparison you make to the Stalag site is unfair. Bletchley already has plenty of things of interest to non-nerds, including exhibits geared towards children. And what they may lack in amenities is more than made up for by their superb tour guides. They manage to explain the very complicated codebreaking operations in terms that most people can understand. So no, it's not just for those who 'understand what it WAS'.
There is some overlap; IIRC the Colossus exhibit is part of the NMOC, but confusingly it follows Bletchley's opening hours, rather than the NMOC's more limited hours.
Oi! Don't rag on my use case! 100+ tabs left open for days may not be for everyone, but there is a group of users that do exactly this. It's a way of filing things for 'later' without creating bookmarks for them. Handy if you only need to look at that page once (so creating a permanent bookmark would be overkill and more administration than just letting the tab sit idle for a couple of days).
There are a few performance metrics that still matter: 1. Flash video playback performance. Youtube video in Firefox stutters on my 2008 Macbook. Unacceptable. Safari doesn't stutter (same video, same computer).
2. Memory use. If the browser can fill my 4 GB RAM with a couple dozen tabs open, something's wrong.
Fair enough. My specific use case though (Macbook, 4 GB RAM, don't tend to reboot more often than software updates require) the main bottleneck is Firefox which fills up all available memory, then starts swapping. That, and waking from hibernation. Both involve large numbers of write cycles, so I'd burn though the available cycles in a relatively short time. An SSD would be fun to have, but not if it burns out in two years.
I looked into putting an SSD into my laptop, but the stories of short life (and getting shorter with each reduction in process size) are putting me off. Would this FeTRAM be more resilient?
Currently, the most popular scheme for storing electric power is pumped (water) storage, which is about 70% efficient. So this idea can be economical even if significant losses occur. The alternative is to start up expensive peak power plants (gas turbines).
It's genius in that it allows load levelling without much investment by the power company, it's silly because the investment will just be moved to the user: Adding one charge cycle per day means that battery life is halved.
The only way this will take off is for users to have a financial incentive to allow the power company to do this, ie the power price during peak demand must be so high that it's cheaper to deplete your EV battery rather than draw from the grid.
The new ship design fits many more containers into a hull that's only one container wider than the previous record. They've played with the placement of the deckhouse and engines, and they've changed the hull shape. The new design also reflects the current economic reality: it's designed for a lower top speed (22.5 instead of 25 knots), most current containers ships aren't operated anywhere near their top speed to save on fuel (and, I suspect, to fit the smaller supply of containers into the current fleet, in effect taking advantage of longer transit times).
It seems I spoke too soon. The Difference Engine build by the Science Museum showed that that was possible to build using the alloys available in Babbage's time. Still, I suspect that printed parts aren't as strong as parts that are milled from solid castings.
If the tolerances don't get you, the required material strength will. One of the reasons the Analytical Engine didn't get built was that the alloys available then weren't strong enough to transmit the force needed to drive the complex geartrains.
If a book is published on paper as well as e-book, there's about 0% chance the book was written using an HTML editor. Instead, it'll be written in a WYSIWYG package and an output processor will be used to create the HTML and PDF. For ebook-only publications, there may be masochists who'll do the whole thing in an HTML editor, but I suspect that won't be the majority. The same goes for instruction manuals. WYSIWYG package or a document management system as the source, and automatic processing to create HTML, PDF and whatnot.
Writing and structuring a book by relying only on inline formatting commands is horribly inefficient and has rightly gone the way of the dodo about two minutes after the GUI was invented. Using visual cues to relay structuring or formatting information is not a sin, but an efficient use of a communications channel.
As LyX, FrameMaker, AuthorIT and a host of other applications show, it's entirely possible to separate presentation from content in a GUI (and even a WYSIWYG) environment. You're right that the user should not engage in visual 'cargo cult' formatting, but forcing the user to write in a text-only interface is not the best way to achieve that.
Slashdot Mirror
Is \include{subdocument} workable when that subdocument is one paragraph long and you have 1000 subdocuments in your book?
In FrameMaker, you have 'conditional text' which allows you to tag text with a condition. During publishing, you select the conditions you want shown or hidden. This allows you to have one master document to describe a series of related machines (or what have you). All WYSIWYG. Autogeneration of all sorts of lists, and a scripting language are available.
AuthorIT and other document management systems use a database. Each of your text fragments (a section or part of a section, down to a single sentence if you want) is a record in a database, and the system allows you to string these together arbitrarily.
AuthorIT can output XML which allows for extensive postprocessing.
The problem I see with \include{subdocument} is that you're relying on the file system to manage your subdocuments. You can open the subdocs as separate files, but the system doesn't organize them for you on-screen, which makes it more difficult to see them in context.
Interesting. In about 13 years in the industry I've never come across a client who used it. Then again, most of our clients do very small print runs (all the way down to custom manuals for every individual machine) for large numbers of related machines. That's when you need reuse facilities.
So, what's the easy-to-use but flexible opposition that LibreOffice should be competing with?
I'll concede the point that LaTeX/LyX is probably still king for technical writing, and that there are other products aimed at people writing "pure text" - but what is a good role-model in the realm of general purpose WP/DTP-crossover?
LaTeX/LyX is a nice project, but 'king for technical writing'? Technical writing generally means user guides and other product manuals, and LaTeX is a niche player at best in that market. FrameMaker is popular, and content management systems like AuthorIT are gaining traction. This market is all about reuse of content, and LaTeX doesn't offer that, as far as I know. LaTeX is aimed more at academic publishing.
For a good role model WP/DTP package, look no further than FrameMaker:
hub brakes
Are you talking about drum brakes, or something else? Drum brakes are as common as mud (in .nl), and have been for at least 30 years.
That mark is useless without the table that tells you what each distance represents. So on that matchstick you haven't stored data, merely a hash of that data.
This isn't about wireless bike brakes, it's about reliable, real-time wireless connections. Surely that's something nerds can find a use for?
Sceptics of Columbus' plan were on record as saying 'Sure you'll be able to sail around the world, when hell freezes over'. He proved them wrong (sort of), and hey presto! Ice age. Coincidence? I think not!
Pure-bred dogs are bred in such a small population that they were getting pretty close to being clones anyway.
or: It's the UI, stupid!
It's unfortunate that Stallman has allowed his ideology to blind him for Jobs' accomplishments. Yes, you can moan about walled gardens, but Steve Jobs made computing accessible to the masses. Without that, you can have all the openness you want, but only a small number of people will be able to enjoy it.
I remember the bad old days. Before 1984, computers were inscrutable and required lots of training to use. The Macintosh changed all that; it made it obvious that there was a better way than the 'everyone invents their own interface' hell that existed before. This, much more than the iPhone and what have you is Jobs's lasting legacy. Those who dismiss Jobs' contribution to society as eye candy are missing the point.
Maybe Stallman's sour grapes are due to the realization that Jobs' contribution is impossible in a FOSS-only world. It's been 30 years since computers became affordable to the general public. I haven't seen much in the way of user interface innovation from the FOSS world.
You need a dictator to decide on a uniform user interface, and you need a dictator to enforce that against everyone's objections.
No, never. I hibernate it instead. Saving the state of my workspace is vital, and saves lots of time. I don't really care about the time it takes to hibernate or come out of hibernation.
They do show some German artifacts (Enigma and Lorenz encoding machines) but don't go into the German side of things too deeply. IIRC they explain the design of the Enigma to some extent, but Lorenz and its brethren don't get much explanation.
Of course, much of the success of Bletchley is owed to the lack of ingenuity of the German scientists and the security holes this created, allowing regular breaks into the encrypted traffic.
Enough with the moaning about Alan Turing already! Yes, he was treated awfully by the British government aftwer WW2, but this has nothing to do with Bletchley; during his tenure at Bletchley Turing was left in peace.
Also, Bletchley currently houses a memorial and celebrates Turing's invaluable contribution to the codebreaking effort. What more do you want?
it was never designed to be a tourist attraction and still isn't except for those who understand what it WAS.
They may not have all the bells and whistles, but the comparison you make to the Stalag site is unfair. Bletchley already has plenty of things of interest to non-nerds, including exhibits geared towards children. And what they may lack in amenities is more than made up for by their superb tour guides. They manage to explain the very complicated codebreaking operations in terms that most people can understand. So no, it's not just for those who 'understand what it WAS'.
There is some overlap; IIRC the Colossus exhibit is part of the NMOC, but confusingly it follows Bletchley's opening hours, rather than the NMOC's more limited hours.
Oi! Don't rag on my use case!
100+ tabs left open for days may not be for everyone, but there is a group of users that do exactly this. It's a way of filing things for 'later' without creating bookmarks for them. Handy if you only need to look at that page once (so creating a permanent bookmark would be overkill and more administration than just letting the tab sit idle for a couple of days).
There are a few performance metrics that still matter:
1. Flash video playback performance. Youtube video in Firefox stutters on my 2008 Macbook. Unacceptable. Safari doesn't stutter (same video, same computer).
2. Memory use. If the browser can fill my 4 GB RAM with a couple dozen tabs open, something's wrong.
Fair enough. My specific use case though (Macbook, 4 GB RAM, don't tend to reboot more often than software updates require) the main bottleneck is Firefox which fills up all available memory, then starts swapping. That, and waking from hibernation. Both involve large numbers of write cycles, so I'd burn though the available cycles in a relatively short time. An SSD would be fun to have, but not if it burns out in two years.
I looked into putting an SSD into my laptop, but the stories of short life (and getting shorter with each reduction in process size) are putting me off. Would this FeTRAM be more resilient?
Currently, the most popular scheme for storing electric power is pumped (water) storage, which is about 70% efficient. So this idea can be economical even if significant losses occur. The alternative is to start up expensive peak power plants (gas turbines).
It's genius in that it allows load levelling without much investment by the power company, it's silly because the investment will just be moved to the user: Adding one charge cycle per day means that battery life is halved.
The only way this will take off is for users to have a financial incentive to allow the power company to do this, ie the power price during peak demand must be so high that it's cheaper to deplete your EV battery rather than draw from the grid.
The new ship design fits many more containers into a hull that's only one container wider than the previous record. They've played with the placement of the deckhouse and engines, and they've changed the hull shape.
The new design also reflects the current economic reality: it's designed for a lower top speed (22.5 instead of 25 knots), most current containers ships aren't operated anywhere near their top speed to save on fuel (and, I suspect, to fit the smaller supply of containers into the current fleet, in effect taking advantage of longer transit times).
It seems I spoke too soon. The Difference Engine build by the Science Museum showed that that was possible to build using the alloys available in Babbage's time. Still, I suspect that printed parts aren't as strong as parts that are milled from solid castings.
If the tolerances don't get you, the required material strength will. One of the reasons the Analytical Engine didn't get built was that the alloys available then weren't strong enough to transmit the force needed to drive the complex geartrains.
If a book is published on paper as well as e-book, there's about 0% chance the book was written using an HTML editor. Instead, it'll be written in a WYSIWYG package and an output processor will be used to create the HTML and PDF.
For ebook-only publications, there may be masochists who'll do the whole thing in an HTML editor, but I suspect that won't be the majority.
The same goes for instruction manuals. WYSIWYG package or a document management system as the source, and automatic processing to create HTML, PDF and whatnot.
Writing and structuring a book by relying only on inline formatting commands is horribly inefficient and has rightly gone the way of the dodo about two minutes after the GUI was invented. Using visual cues to relay structuring or formatting information is not a sin, but an efficient use of a communications channel.
As LyX, FrameMaker, AuthorIT and a host of other applications show, it's entirely possible to separate presentation from content in a GUI (and even a WYSIWYG) environment. You're right that the user should not engage in visual 'cargo cult' formatting, but forcing the user to write in a text-only interface is not the best way to achieve that.