[7898] in testers
Re: dvips and outreach
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Tue Mar 10 11:19:25 2009
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:18:24 -0400
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
To: Tim Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
Cc: testers@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <20090310151824.GZ23817@multics.mit.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0903100941040.11542@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
> In the case of dvips, I suspect most users will be able to figure it out
> before they find any documentation we'd write on the matter; dvips does
> indicate that it is producing "file.ps".
Indeed. I meant to be directing the question about the larger issue
of how we handle changes in that category, not dvips in particular.
(Though my experience is that few users seem to actually read these
messages and attempt to figure things out. Maybe Athena should have a
sipb-whiteboard -type puzzle as part of the gdm greeter and if you
don't solve the puzzle, you can't login.)
--jhawk
> That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a stock answer on the topic.
>
> -Tim Abbott
>
> On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, John Hawkinson wrote:
>
> > When hacking on tex documents, I'm entirely used to
> >
> > dvips file
> >
> > to print file.dvi. Under debathena, this produces file.ps.
> >
> > There seem to be considerable resistance to changing this,
> > since it's more and more the default on more and more tex
> > distributions. I can't say I buy this argument, but that's
> > ancillary.
> >
> > What are we doing to educate users about differences like these?
> >
> > I'm not sure how you solve it.
> > If you make a list of hundreds of things changed in DebAthena,
> > no one will read it, and users can perhaps google and find it
> > after they get frustrated and say, "Oh, well, I can't yell at them
> > as loud because they did put it on their web site," but it's
> > not actually *helpful*.
> >
> > You could wrap dvips in a wrapper with a zephyr or a zenity
> > message the first time you use it if your .generation is too
> > old, but that seems (a) like a lot of work (b) potentially
> > unhelpful if people ignore messages the first time, etc.
> >
> > I assume there is a large set of issues in this category, so I worry
> > what the answers are.
> >
> > --jhawk
> >
