PDF is Driving me Crazy !!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by NatCh

It'll handle your TXT file just fine as it is, groosh. You can convert it to an RTF or LRF if you really want to, but with a TXT file you won't really get anything extra out of it.

Have to disagree with you there, I'm afraid Nat .

The whole point of Stingo's Word macro is that the Reader doesn't handle text file at all well. The font is way too small (for me, at least), and all the hard line breaks mean that the lines mostly break in mid-screen which is terribly distracting.

Converting to RTF, setting a decent font size, and getting rid of all the hard line-breaks completely transforms the reading experience. That's exactly what the Word macro does.

[nerys]

One problem. That dozen knobs per dozen channels. THATS the GUI while the simple speaker and mics with 2 knobs. THATS the CLI

You have it backwards. with the massive sound board I can usually "find" the simple "knobs" right away just by glancing over the board and outright IGNORE the rest until I learn what they do.

Why is the simple setup with 2 knobs like a CLI well its all MANUAL and HIDDEN. I can do everything the Massive sound board can do "if I know how" ie solder in components as needed take meters and probes to different connections and alter than as needed.

the GUI is the massive sound board. the CLI is the simple interface with 2 knobs.

Now the easy touse massive well marked sound board is the eq of a GOOD gui while the sloppy nothing marked massive sound board is the eq of a bad gui.

either one is better for most people than the CLI.

I have no idea how a PDF is driving me craxy because it will not let me change page size NO they are not vector based who the heck thought of that ??? PDF's assume the properties of whatever you shove inside them so the FONTS can be vector based but the content is most definatly not. HTML flows pdf's make them RIGID since the sony reader does not "reflow" the pdf is simply SCALES it to your screen.

A CLI is never intrinsically better than a GUI. a gui will always be better because a GUI is a mode of how our BRAINS actually work.

When you have to "type" brain /breath /repeat every 20 seconds to make your lungs work come back and talk to me :-)

How do you make dinner ? Assemble a Bicycle ? Fold a paper airplane?

Certaintly not by any form or eq to a CLI. its all GUI its just how we interact with the world.

there are "some" benifits to integrating CLI features into a GUI. example keyboard shortcuts. They are great. useless at the get go but once you have gotten used to them IE memorized the ones you need or want they are wonderful.

CTRL+C and V or X and V are so much easier than moving mouse click file edit then etc.. etc..

[alex_d]

This might be slightly off topic, but does anyone know how to change the size of the pages of a file that is already in pdf format? So, put simply, I have pdf's in regular size but need them in a smaller size so they are easier to read.

Use CutePDF to crop the page. (Crop = to cut off crap from the top and bottom. I believe that's the actual etymology.) Then run it through RasterFarian. Reflowing, copy&pasting into bookdesigner, or OCRing are also possible but are much more involved. However, they'll let you make the letters even bigger.


Natch and kovigdoyal, you are completely incorrect.

GUI applications, the vast majority of times, offer much more functionality and are much more complex (and the fact that they make you feel like they're not is the whole point!). I have no idea how you can think otherwise (perhaps, kovigdoyal, you've spent too much time using Linux guis which are typically jokes meant to passify the "n00bs"). Again, you usually loose scripting (but not with tools like CuteFTP or MS Word. Word, in particular, is exceptionally scriptable), but I'm just talking about what a specific application, such as ftp, lets you do.

Take a look at the man page for FTP. It's pretty long. Yet CuteFTP is still going to let you do far more. (Its Settings page alone probably has three times as many options. And these options are logically organized, rather than dumped alphabetically.)

Also, kovigdoyal, Word was not designed for typesetting! You must compare Tex to a publishing program like QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign. Typesetting with Word is very difficult.

The more important thing regarding FTP and Tex: it's possible to do a lot with them "in theory" (like when coding html with notepad), but in practice it's so difficult that none of the features are used. GUIs, especially latest-generation GUIs like in Word 2007, not only have many more features but they lead you to actually use them. That is what counts in the end!

To take an even more powerful example, WYSWYG html editors let people create very complex webpages (such as this forum) but they do NOT let you do anything that notepad can't. In fact, I'd even say notepad/vi is more capable "in theory." Yet I would pay you $100,000 to rewrite this message board with notepad or vi. And if you take me up on the offer (and actually succeed), you'll be lucky to end up earning minimum wage.

[alex_d]

Regarding what nerys said about keyboard shortcuts:

I actually disagree. The philosophy of the CTRL+ shortcuts is the same as of CLI (especially when there are no tooltips to let you know about them and you have to look them up in help). I usually prefer the ALT+ shortcuts (e.g. try pressing ALT+F+O, although that's not a good example). These take more letters, but they have the gui philosophy of presenting to you options, teaching you as you go along, and letting you memorize them through experience.

ALT+ shortcuts (aka 'accelerator keys') is what I mean when I say I use the GUI with the keyboard.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has taken to despising them lately. Fn Vista doesn't even let you turn on underlining of letters. They just deleted the option from its spot! Why, you sick bastards?!?!

[HarryT]

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, etc, go back to ancient history. Those "old-timers" among us will remember an IBM standard, back at the dawn of time (well, around 1980-ish), called "SAA" - "Systems Application Architecture". Both the Mac and Windows GUIs were originally implementations of the SAA standard, and that's what specified these keyboard shortcuts. We're still using them 30-odd years later!

[NatCh]

Gah! I wasn't trying to equate either the box or the board with either the GUI or the CLI! I was just trying to explain how greater complexity can permit greater flexibility and better results with that example.

[JSWolf]

Remember in some GUIs, we have the advanced and the simple. So, it is possible to be like that soundboard with both the simple and complex.

I will say one thing in support of the CLI, I was working on an ebook with html2lrf and instead of having to retype the command or use the 4NT history, I just dake a BAT file that I was able to run every time I wanted to convert and it worked fine. I can then keep the BAT file with the source file(s) and I'll know what my settings were. With a lot of GUIs, you set your settings, do what you needs, change them for something else and eventually you forget your settings you have for the first thing you did if you ever need t redo it. Unless of course the GUI has a save and load settings option.

[kovidgoyal]

Sigh you aren't getting the point a graphical application that lets you do scripting is using a command interface. The very fact that successful GUI apps need to include scripting is an indication of the limitations of the GUI as an interface to a computer.
And alex what's Word good for if it doesn't do typesetting? Also this forum is generated by a PHP script which (probably) uses an HTML template which I seriously doubt was built in a WYSWIG editor.

EDIT: alex, I'm curious, if Word is not good for typesetting, what is it good for? Creating reflowable documents? Essentially a WYSWIG HTML editor? At least in my experience people do use Word for typesetting and the results are pretty awful. I've never used/seen Quark express so I can't comment on it.

[alex_d]

"Dude, a GUI application that does scripting is using command lines internally. And dude, a C++ compiler is converting everything to assembly. So you see, the fact that c++ has to be converted to assembly is an indication of the inferiority of c++ as a way of telling computers what to do. You just don't get it, man."

yeah, whatever


As for Word: yeah, it doesn't usually get used for anything beside choosing fonts and setting margins. (And i'd say it does a far better job of it than tex.) However, the 2007 interface should go a long way for people to start using all sorts of other elements and features (especially the essential ones like columns, tables, and equations).

Try not to have pre-conceptions that GUIs are anything in particular (or that they can't be reimagined to overcome their shortcomings). They're just a philosophy that you have to be constantly informing the user of what the possibilities are and trying your best to present them elegantly and intuitively. Any other philosophy, such as "the application should never tell you what its features are and the only place to find about them is in a manual" is just... ridiculous. You don't actually believe in it, do you kovidgoyal?


P.S. the difference between Word and a publishing program is that in a publishing program you create a box every time you want to put in some text. The box can go anywhere and overlap with anything. Thus you get complete and simple control over layout. (You also have have a bunch of other features for controlling font kerning, orientation, images, etc. Incidentally, Word now does kerning too which is great.) Reflowing from box to box is possible, but the boxes themselves don't move automatically. I think a lot of people use Word when they should be using a publishing program, but for lack of complete reflow the box paradigm is not suitable for documents whose content is being or will be significantly changed.

[kovidgoyal]

This is the last time I'm going to say this. A GUI app that uses scripting is using a command interface. I don't care what it uses internally. The INTERFACE is COMMAND based.

[mogui]

I love the idea of rectitude.

-- Rob Morrow

[alex_d]

Ok, kovigdoyal, I'll agree with you. A typical GUI application that has scripting is subscribing to a CLI philosophy of having features that don't try to expose or explain themselves. Applications should have a GUI-philosophy method of scripting. Programming languages should too. (ie far beyond C#'s intellisense, tooltips, and dynamic help, which still go a long way).

Now, kovigdoyal, where were we? I challenged you to say that the CLI way of not telling you ANYTHING about how to use the program as you're using it is correct. Well, do you really think it's correct?

[NatCh]

I think you're right about at the point where you get asked to not make personal attacks, alex_d.

If you want to discuss the matter, there's no problem there, but name calling is just not MobileRead.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This is the last time I'm going to say this. A GUI app that uses scripting is using a command interface. I don't care what it uses internally. The INTERFACE is COMMAND based.

I've seen plenty of GUIs for Windows created just to pass on the options for command line apps such as FLAC for example.

[alex_d]

Who uses 'punk' as an insult?


No one on google.