[tex-live] One last question

[Rowland McDonnell]

I'm sending this email since I'm sick and tired of the disgusting
hypocrisy of the responses I've been getting on this allegedly `friendly
technical support' list.

Someone needs to say something and I'm in the mood to do it.

Since I've been accused of trolling by a regular poster here, I assume
that most of you accept that false and malicious allegation against me
as the truth and nothing but the truth.  Of course an accusation is
always the truth and someone making an accusation is always working from
the highest of honest motives.

Of course they always are, aren't they? (hint: `irony')

I'm no damned troll - just a Mac user seeking information so that he
could learn to look after MacTeX as well as he learnt to look after
OzTeX and CMacTeX.

That's all I was after.  What did I get?  Hostility and unhelpfulness
and personal abuse.

The problem is that MacTeX has user-hostile documentation and a couple
of user-hostile mailing lists (tex-live and TeX on MacOS X).  So it
goes.

>2009/8/1 Rowland McDonnell <rjmmnet-lists at yahoo.co.uk>:
>> What I would like to know is:
>
>Are you interested in a discussion or just trolling?

<sigh>

I'm interested in neither, of course, as was surely apparent from my
messages?

My experience here has shown that it is impossible to get a useful
discussion in tex-live, therefore I am not interested in trying to
achieve one.

There is no point in attempting the impossible.

Of course I have no interest in trolling - what on *EARTH* made you ask
that, if not a desire to insult me personally for no good reason?

> I've seen better
>trolls, btw.

Suggesting I'm a troll is more than a little personally insulting, don't
you think?

If you'd actually *read* my messages and made an honest attempt to
understand them, rather than what you chose to do which was find an
opening to join in the personal abuse against me, it would be perfectly
clear that I joined the tex-live mailing list because I'm a long-term
Mac TeX user who wants to learn how to manage and maintain his MacTeX
installation as well as he could maintain his old Mac TeX (OzTeX and
CMacTeX) installations but cannot find out how to do so.

There was, very obviously, no attempt on my part to do anything like
trolling - I was just trying to find information.

Since there is no sign of me behaving in the fashion of a troll, and
lots of signs of me behaving in the fashion of one who seeks knowledge
despite all the insults he's got to endure, can  you explain why you
decided to insult me yourself?

The problem I ran into which caused me to post on tex-live was lousy
documentation.

The next problem I met was a refusal of those who know to give *ME* any
useful information (Norbert Preining in particular was mostly willing
only to provide pointers to information sources which have so far
utterly failed to provide *ANY* of the data I'm after, while being
personally abusive in the process), and also their insistence on adding
upsettingly insulting personal insults to their staggeringly unhelpful
replies.

Then I got just plain personal abuse for no reason other than to turn
this `community' fully against me so that I would be driven out from
this place.  But of course you will not admit that happened even though
I can quote the insulting posts in full - such as your one, suggesting
that I'm a troll.

I decided that there was no point in flogging a dead horse and gave up
on tex-live as a forum that clearly doesn't have any place for someone
like me who's not a serious hacker with a lot of programming experience
and knowledge of several programming languages etc.

That's all that's gone on: an innocent turned up here excepting a
helpful mailing list, got no help, did get personal abuse, decided to go
away but not without first explaining a few home truths to you lot.

I realise that you might find it hard to credit - after all, the fact
that I'm straightforward, honest, and genuinely only interested in
learning about tex-live is something that you will almost certain reject
as `impossible'.

Rowland.