From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: Mac, Window, Throw
Date: 3 Sep 92 13:26:58 GMT
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

"Ken Rawlings" <krawling@banana.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
>         There are two relatively simple things that I want to do on a Mac tha
> I _still_ have no idea how to do, even after reading all of the info-mac
> digests, and using Mac's extensively. 
> 
>         #1: Send a postscript file to the printer. Just shove that baby down
>             the serial connection to the printer.

Run the SendPS program.  Select the file from the file selector.  Click OK.
There, that wasn't too hard, was it?

What, you don't have the SendPS program?  Of course Apple don't provide it on
the system disks. Believe it or not, fooling around with intermediate printer
dump files is not something most users want to do.

Users want to take documents and print them.  They don't care what
intermediate printer dump language the printer speaks, be it HPGL,
Postscript, Laserjet bitmaps or Serbo-Croat.  They don't want to play with
intermediate printer dump files.  They don't want to half print something on
one machine, grab the intermediate file, transfer it somewhere else then
finish the printing somewhere else.  They just want to print documents.

Apart from anything else, most Mac users don't have Postscript printers. 
SendPS should be supplied by whoever sold you the printer.  Also, Postscript
is a damn silly way to supply a document anyway, as it's not editable and not
device-independent.  You don't even know it'll print on all Postscript
printers.  Even if it does, how do you know the user has the right size of
paper?  We don't all use US Legal size paper, you know.

Mantis doesn't have a Postscript printer at all.  But if you give me the
actual document, I can probably print it; we can handle a list of document
formats as long as your arm.

>         #2: See this file sitting on the Hard Drive? Execute it. No, I don't
>             care that you think it's a "Document", just trust me and run the
>             damn thing.

Huh?  Run it with what?  You have to tell the machine what you want it to
feed the document to.  What do you expect it to do, read your mind?

>                          This is a _real_ problem when you have a bunch of
>             .hqx files

It is?  I just copy the .hqx files from the PC disk using Apple File
Exchange, lasso them, drag them to the DeHQX icon, and let go.  Bingo, it
eats them and spits out the decoded files.

I then drag any archive files to the expander icon, and it uncompresses them
and spits the results out into a bunch of folders.  Dead easy.  All you need
is the software.

I don't have to worry about the type of the .hqx files, as the DeHQX program
will eat any sort of text file.  It'll even handle multi-part .hqx files.  I
don't have to worry about the archiver used either, as the expander deals
with both StuffIt and Compact Pro archives.

Please, let's have less of this rubbish.  This really isn't at all relevant
to comp.human-factors; you're just showing that you really know nothing about
the Mac.  If you must ask trivial questions, do it in comp.sys.mac.misc.

And try asking "How can I do this..." rather than saying "The Mac is crap
because it can't do this..." -- you'll get better responses and look less
ignorant.


mathew
-- 
"Even the most bizarre of the unions (probably that between a cat's gall
 stone and a single note 'G' from CNN's ident theme) managed to convey a
 sense of rampant impropriety."  -- 'Fortran Five', Simon G. Lawrence Leonard
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors