Re: Word up

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Andrew Plato wrote:
 
> "Emru Townsend" wrote....
> 
> > Regardless of his level of expertise, if you hand a carpenter a screwdriver
> > to drive a five-inch nail into a block of wood, he can't do his job
> > properly.  Andrew, is it so hard to concede this point?
> 
> Its just not that simple. Again you are operating on the assumption that Word
> or other tools are fundamentally flawed and cannot provide even the basic
> functions. That is not true. They just don't work in the way you want them to.
> I have seen great docs written in Word, FrameMaker, heck even on typewriters.
> There is no 1:1 correlation between tool and quality.
> 
> So the notion that somehow this set of tools is more "proper" to use over that
> set - is absurd. It is really just a matter of personal preference and comfort.

Maybe a better analogy is this: A carpenter has to do a lot of
nailing - say, putting shingles on a roof. You can hand the
carpenter a hammer and loose nails, or a nail gun with several clips
of nails.

Both sets of tools have the same basic functionality. However, the
nail gun achieves the same result far more quickly and with less
effort. It's not perfect; for example, if the nail is driven in
properly, the carpenter's going to have trouble removing the nail,
while an ordinary hammer has a claw for removing the nail. But, for
most purposes, the nail gun is the superior tool, and, aside from
rank beginners (who probably can't drive a single nail straight,
either) that's going to be true no matter who is using it. Using a
nail gun, the carpenter is going to be finished long before another
an equally skilled person using a hammer.

Personal preference and comfort play a large part, sure. But you're
going out on a rhetorical limb to say that they are the only
considerations.


-- 
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7189 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

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