Re: [ANNOUNCE] GIT 1.5.3-rc4

From: Bruce Korb <bkorb@gnu.org>
Date: Aug 5, 2007, 21:43 UTC
Message-ID: <46B6446D.4030607@gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0708051221290.5037@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>> Yes, name-calling and ad hominem attacks again.
> 
> No. Emacs _is_ odd. It's not even installed by default on most modern 
> Linux distributions.

Hi Linus,

Thus disparaging distributions that do install it. I've not had to pull any extra packages to get it so far, but I only update every few years. I've been a happy emacs user for 24 years.

> There's no name-calling there. That's just a solid fact.

The name calling is unseemly on all sides.

Show 9 quoted lines

>> Please try to remember that Texinfo is a _source_ format, and it
>> produces reasonably hyperrefed and coherent PDF and HTML documents as
>> well as plain ASCII.  That it is also able to produce working info
>> files should not bother you.
> 
> You do not even know what you are talking about.
> 
> AsciiDoc is *also* a source format. But the source format is already 
> readable IN ITSELF. Which is the whole point!

Readable, just not writable. It's markup language is a bunch of special characters that require familiarity to understand. Sure, you can peruse the text just fine, but why should this sort of thing:

   = My Doc Title =

be preferred to:

    @settitle My Doc Title

@chapter, @section, @subsection really make a lot more sense to me than this sort of cruft (my disparaging term): Level 0 (top level): ====================== Level 1: ---------------------- Level 2: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Level 3: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Level 4 (bottom level): ++++++++++++++++++++++

It really boils down to preferences and familiarity and should not degenerate into nasty name calling.

> Headers? Lists? They look like headers and lists in the .txt files. No 
> need to think about it as a reader.

So do well-formatted .texi docs. I don't really like anything other than WYSIWYG, but that doesn't lend it self to reformatting into man pages et al.

> See? Texinfo is decidedly inferior. But you don't have to take it so 
> personally. So is pretty much anything else. Anything XML/SGML is even 
> *worse*.

Bah! They all have their drawbacks and preferences are going to weight drawbacks differently.

So let's all dislike all our choices, eh?  Cheers - Bruce