[OT] Editors & mac to Linux stories

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Goranson:

Thanks for your response:

Ted Goranson wrote:
> Someone should have introduced you to Nisuswriter.

I never tried Nisus Writer, but it had fans whom I respected greatly (I 
was pretty poor at the time, and BBEdit Lite's price -- free -- was 
attractive). And the Mac OS X version of Nisus Writer still has a lot 
more growing before it has anywhere near the features of the classic 
version. Sigh.

> Here's one to watch: Frontier is slated to go open source. There is 
> already talk of porting it to Linux. Frontier used to have a special 
> relationship with BBedit and it is possible that it could enjoy a 
> similar relationship with an existing Linux editor, say WebDevKit 
> (formerly Quanta) or jEdit or even Emacs so that Linux _could_ have 
> something stellar.

I tried learning Frontier back when it was a major alternative to 
AppleScript on the Mac (and, incidentally, was free for a while -- the 
business model for Frontier has been all over the map). It had a steep 
learning curve and almost no documentation to help with that curve. In 
playing with it, I never quite "got" the overall model it was trying to 
follow. Now, years later, I see that it was trying to pack an 
object-oriented programming environment into an idiosyncratic outliner 
metaphor, with a weird command line widget thrown it for spice. However, 
it's too late, now.

It will be interesting to see what Dave Winer does with open source. He 
is reputed to be a headstrong, opinionated, and argumentative developer, 
who never backs down from a fight. This kind of attitude will not be 
very conducive to leadership of an open source project (in my opinion). 
I don't think the GPL has a clause for taking back a project once it has 
been opened. :-)

Only my opinion.

Best wishes,
Clint

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