[texhax] On the \\ problem

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2013-03-25 at 11:03:18 -0500, Michael Doob wrote:

 > On 13-03-25 10:42 AM, Michael Barr wrote:
 > > Let me start by saying that I am not interested in a flame war
 > > over my OS or editor.  My editor is one I have been using since
 > > 1984 and I will not change it.  My OS is windows and I will not
 > > change that either.  I did try Linux for a few years, but gave up
 > > since I could not find an editor that suited me.  Emacs is
 > > unquestionably powerful, but I could not use it.  I could not
 > > figure out even the magic incantation that enabled word wrap. (I
 > > had a .emacsrc file from an earlier version that did enable word
 > > wrap, but failed with this version.)  I am accustomed to this
 > > editor I have been using for over 28 years and will not, at my
 > > age, change.
 > 
 > Honestly, Michael, why didn't you tell us of your preconditions
 > when you presented the problem? If you had told us you were stuck
 > in a 1984 time warp we could have worked from there. I might add
 > that sed was available at that time and could solve your problem,
 > but I suppose you don't have that on your Windows machine.

It's probably not installed but it's available for Windows:

   http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm

 > Really, if you write to this newsgroup in 2013, your should expect
 > to receive solutions that are at least of this century.

Michael said:

 >> I am accustomed to this editor I have been using for over 28 years
 >> and will not, at my age, change.

I think that we have to respect his age at least (though I don't how
old Michel actually is).  I understand that people don't want to
change the text editor they are accustomed to.  Though I recommend
TeXworks to beginners, I don't use it myself because I'm accustomed to
the Emacs keystrokes.  I've bought a book about vi because I tought
that it can't hurt to be halfways familiar with the ubiquitous Unix
text editor, but since I knew how to achieve things with Emacs, I did
not look into the book frequently.

Text editors are nasty things.  Once you are accustomed to the
keystrokes of a particular one, you really don't want to use 
another one.

As far as the age concerned, a friend of mine stuck with emTeX on
MS-DOS while all his colleagues switched to Windows and the rest of
the world to Linux.  He said that *in his age* it's not advisable to
change a running system.  I met him 20 years later and was surprized
that he's on Linux now.  Seems that the age is only an excuse, not
a hurdle.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
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Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
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