YDL in Mac OS X Hints today

[Clinton MacDonald]

Ray:

Ray Auge wrote:

> I simply *must* put in my two cents.


Excellent -- I am delighted that my screed has engendered so much 
discussion.

My comments below are meant as clarifications of my position, not as an 
attack on your very realistic and well-argued positions.

>> Okay -- how about copy-and-paste in a word processor?
>> (That was a low blow, and I should be ashamed.)
>
> Is there a problem here, I've never seen it. I'd say wrong or bad
> version of softwares.


I was specifically referring to the fact that copy-and-paste does not 
work in the version of OpenOffice.org (1.0.2?) that is available for 
Yellow Dog Linux.  This is inexcusable. There are about three functions 
that I imagine *define* what is a word processor, and two of them are 
"copy" and "paste."

When I subsequently mentioned that it took me two-and-one-half hours to 
install software, I was referring to the time it took me to update 
OpenOffice.org to version 1.1 -- see my note at:

<http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-general/2004-February/011860.html>

OpenOffice.org 1.1 *has* copy-and-paste. Hurrah. These two-and-one-half 
hours were well spent and a great learning experience, but it is a far 
cry from the drag-and-drop installations I am used to from the Macintosh OS.

>> I need to be able to type long diatribes into poorly designed forms, 
>> while including complex diagrams and using institutionally specified 
>> fonts. OpenOffice.org doesn't fit the bill (surprisingly, I find that 
>> poor font support, rather than forms, to be the biggest
>
> I have just about every TTF, MathML, Mathmatica, dings, bings, 
> diddle-di-doos fonts installed with OOo (well over 2000, try that with 
> M$, 800+ and your in trouble).
>
> Me thinks your using either a bad build, or the wrong version of OOo.


Why is Palatino so hard to read on the screen? I'm an old guy, and my 
old guy eyes cannot stare at a screen very long unless the fonts are 
antialiased. All I want are Palatino and Helvetica -- is that so much to 
ask? (Actually, I really want Baskerville and Gil Sans, but those are 
more esoteric.)

>> It doesn't fly if pmud dies mysteriously every second
>
> Never happened to me. (ibook2, 600Mhz, YDL 3.0.1)


Happens all the time to me (PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet"). One thing I have 
learned is that pmud can't handle new hardware at all. Slipping in my 
second battery will kill pmud, as will plugging in a mouse. However, 
there are other times when pmud just quits.

> If your removable media doesn't show up as a link on your desktop, then
> you have a problem.


Yes, I have a problem. I have never been able to see a Zip disk with YDL 
(desktop, Konsole, or command line). It's annoying, but not critical.

> Mozilla?? I do it at least a few times a day. The catch is to use the
> combinations of <ctrl>-c (copy) and <middle-click> on the mouse (paste).


Can you copy from the Konsole and paste into Mozilla? How about vice 
versa? I can't.

> yum, apt-get, etc... I didn't think that you could approach the
> simplicity of the packaging paradigm with any other system.


yum and apt-get are marvelous! They are great for installation of that 
subset of programs that are available to them. For anything outside that 
universe, it is chaos.

>> need a shareware application that turns xmms on and
>
> AT and/or cron can schedule anything, even XMMS, and there are even
> GUI's for both???


Tell me more! Where can I learn this magic?

> KDE, just gotta set it up that way (in about four clicks).


Please tell me how it is done -- I have not discovered the trick. I have 
looked all over through the Options and Preferences, and have not 
figured out how to change the click behavior from single-click to 
double-click.

> File associations? I challenge anyone to argue the power over file
> associations that KDE has. You can associate multiple programs with any
> file type, the first is the default. The rest show up in the right-click
> context menu... Does any other OS/WM do that???


Now that I have installed OpenOffice 1.1, I cannot get files with a 
".rtf" extension to open with swriter. A bit frustrating.

> If an installed piece of software does not show up in your path, then
> either it's a development package, or it wasn't installed properly to
> begin with.


Perhaps my packages have not been installed correctly. As mentioned, I 
use programs in the /sbin directory constantly (for instance, 
"/sbin/service pmud start"); not in my PATH. And, what is the difference 
between programs installed in /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /etc, or 
/usr/local/bin/etc/bananas/bin? I have not yet seen the logic.

>> (whatever that is). I need to be able to perform daily
>> (if not hourly) chores while logged in as an
>

Again, /sbin/service pmud, /sbin/adsl-start, or /sbin/snooze are my 
examples. Not only are they not in my path, I must perform two extra 
steps (login as root, enter a password) to enact these commands.

> And the problem is? In OSX when you login with an administrator account
> you ARE root, so what is the difference?


That's not quite true. The administrator accounts in Mac OS X are more 
akin to "sudo" in Linux. One is asked for the administrator password 
rather than a root password to install software, for instance. In fact, 
root is not enabled on any of my Mac OS X boxes, and I do not imagine 
ever needing it.

By contrast, I had to log in as root as soon as I installed YDL so that 
I could enact visudo to edit the sudoers file and add my name to it 
(let's not go into how unintuitive that process would be to an absolute 
beginner). By default in Linux *no one* has administrator privileges. 
Very odd.

>> I need a beer.
>
> I concur.


:-)

> I agree these are an issue with YDL, but they _are_ being worked on.


Yes, they are. But Terra Soft is not very communicative about it, so it 
feels as if progress is slow, whether that perception is accurate or 
not. And, you are completely correct that YDL is a marvelous 
work-in-progress.

> I agree that there is much room to grow. But I also think that few
> realize how much time they really did have to invest in those other
> Operating systems to learn them initially. And then think that Linux is
> hard, right off the bat. Even though they haven't invested even a
> fraction of the time they did with the others. As a result it gets an
> unfair assessment.


I agree 100%! Well said!

Hey, thanks for responding to my tirade! This is fun. I was looking for 
another opinion as well as to vent some steam (I recently broke my 
Wallstreet's processor card, and that has made me cranky; more cheerily, 
I just won a newer, faster, processor daughtercard on eBay, so my 
Wallstreet may live, again!).

If you have more responses, I recommend we take them off the list. 
However, if you have specific answers to some of my difficulties, by all 
means respond to the list so that everyone can benefit!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>