More on fP 6.0 features

Tue Oct 26 16:56:39 PDT 2004

On Tue, Oct 26 19:07 , Fairlight gie sprachen "Vyizdur zomen 
emororz izaziz zander izorziz", and continued with: 

> >From inside the gravity well of a singularity, John Esak shouted:

> > Oh, I just meant that you can build virtually _any_ HTML
> > document from within the processing tables of filePro using
> > the "atomic" HTML commands themselves. Essentially, until you
> > have a few good working models, everything must be done at
> > the lowest possible level of design. Just about in exactly
> > the opposite way most HTML design tools work today... they
> > create the whole page for you and you never see the HTML code
> > at all... (unless you are me, who would much rather write
> > my HTML code in vi...) Anyway, these very low level, actual
> > HTML commands are very useful, but writing with them is slow
> > and laborious until you get some larger higher level models
> > built, like forms and display pages, etc.

> If you're referring to things like <body> and <hr> and such,
> well...yeah, then I understand you.

> I, like you, write all my HTML in vi. When I need it in
> filePro, I have that nifty little utility that makes a callable
> table out of a whole document.

> The only time I've written -any- version of HTML in anything
> except vi was when I tested Word's ability to do it (hated
> it), HotDog Pro (hated it), and when I've used emacs instead
> of vi. :) I've tested some others over the years. I've never,
> ever liked a visual HTML editor. They usually write incredibly
> bloated HTML, and I don't like the lack of complete control
> I'm afforded by doing it manually. (As an example of bloat,
> I once reduced a 27K HTML document from FrontPage to 1.5K
> of hand-trimmed HTML, and it was functionally and visually
> identical--but loaded a LOT faster on 28.8 modems.)

You just haven't had the pleasure of working with a good
HTML/web editor/construction tool then.

For about a year or so I was using Cosmo.  It shipped included
in the SGI Indys.  But when you pay $7K to $15K for a workstation
you expect a bit more for your money.  The $15K version we had
there was capable of real-time video editing and could also read
and write audio DAT files.

Not much bloat at all but productivity was truly amazing.

> Some may not believe this, but GUI HTML authoring tools
> actually -slow me down-. I've had people fire up FrontPage to
> create something for debugging purposes while on the phone and
> I've finished before they had a chance to get very far, and
> already been testing the CGI for which the form was designed to
> be a front end. I kid you not.

Cosmo was great for quick development and it was excellent for
bringing in graphics and reszing them as you went.

> Maybe it's my typing speed. Could be all that
> mouse/keyboad/mouse/keyboard they have you do in GUI design
> tools. Terribly slow by comparison for me.

I can beleive that - but for intricate graphics the Cosmo was
really nice.  And with the MIPS chips [RISC processor] it was fast.
[You should be able to infer that from the real-time video editing
I mentioned above].

Now you can do that on PCs that are running 2-3 GHz - but in those
days PCs were consdiered fast when they had 200Mhz Pentiums.

That was one of the few tools I missed from the SGI's

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com