Re: Info tutorial is out of date

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Brad!

On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 09:23:42AM +0700, Brad Collins wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> > Yes, but surely not all.  Might it still be that in poorer countries
> > there are newbies with PCs of insufficient power to support X?  

> These comments are a bit off topic -- but I would like to address the
> myth that third world countries are full of ancient computers which
> can only run CLI environments.

Off topic they might be, but they're the most interesting to appear in
this list for some time (IMAO).

[ Information about infrastructure snipped, but read with interest. ]

> In much of the rural parts of the Far East, I can safely say that the
> oft repeated myth that people in third-world countries only have
> access to old technology, ancient hardware and software is just not
> true.

OK.  Thanks very much for the hard information.

> A PC in the third-world needs to operate in places with no air
> conditioning, ungrounded electrical connections, dust during the dry
> season, high humidity in the rainy season and are assaulted by vast
> numbers of crawling and flying insects in all seasons.

So you see even more bugs than we do.  ;-)

> Computers don't last long in those conditions, so you don't see any old
> hardware and the only new hardware anyone makes today is designed to
> run MS products.

OK.

> I think it's safe to say that the vast number of people even in poor
> countries will learn how to use a mouse before they learn emacs or
> info.

OK.

> That said -- I learned emacs over a telnet connection, and when I train
> people to use emacs (most of our inhouse development tools are emacs
> applications) I encourage them to spend the first month learning emacs
> by running it -nw in a shell window.  It's a bit severe, but it helps
> force people to learn to use the keyboard and not avoid the learning
> curve.  After a month, most people are comfortable enough with the
> keyboard that they don't feel the need to use the mouse much when they
> switch over to x.

Excellent!

> I also don't like the term shortcut, it carries with it the idea that
> it is not the recommended way to use the application and has only been
> tacked on as an afterthought to appease "power users".

Heh!  We're not so easily appeased.  ;-)

Again, thanks very much for the real data.

> Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org>, Bankwao, Thailand

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)