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[crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross)]

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On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 2:26 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 2:13 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> And it's an annoying chore when companies I actually want
>> to deal with send receipts and the like in (godawful) HTML only.
>>
>
> ​Or when your HR and Legal dept sends legal documents (like tax info and
> patent disclosures )  using XPS instead of PS or PDF and wonder why much of
> the company can not or will not read it when "legal can read it just fine."
>

Or when the project management consultants ask to see your requirements
document and you send it to them in troff and they write back, "I can't
open this in Word." Sigh.

One of my pet peeves when I got my first job outside of a university
environment was that I was expected to drop all of the tools I'd been
accustomed to using and start using "the standard", which basically meant
something Microsoft based. Even though I was running FreeBSD on my
workstation, and not Windows NT. It was somewhat maddening; whenever I
tried to use Windows I felt like I was typing in jello because it was so
unfamiliar.

I finally gave up MH for email (and acme Mail under Plan 9) when I realized
this whole "web" thing was here to stay and that GMail had acquired a
somewhat reasonable user interface, that email attachments were now the
norm even within a single organization, and that I wasn't going to get away
from any of it. The world moves, even if not always forward. But I still
somewhat resent the idea that the "cloud" is forcing me into a specific
model of working that requires I learn a mandated toolset that I don't
really care for: I'd rather be able to pick and choose the tools that best
suit the problem at hand and my style of working and combine them in ways
that are useful to me, but that weren't anticipated by the original
authors. I think that's sort of the essence of the Unix tool philosophy,
but something that's fallen by the wayside, even under Unix, and I think
that's a real shame.

        - Dan C.
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