Re: Even more Gnus material: we made the paper!

[Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com>]

If I can get my graphics in ascii art especially for bar charts and 
histograms I'm a happy camper.

On Wed, 2 Mar 2016, Emanuel Berg wrote:

> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 19:44:37
> From: Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Even more Gnus material: we made the paper!
> 
> Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za> writes:
>
>>> And of course, Emacs is just one of the wide
>>> variety of "terminal-" or "shell-based" tools with
>>> which users operate their computers and use the
>>> Internet without the need for a graphical
>>> interface. Emanuel goes on to say he considers
>>> himself "text-based" and has largely "bypassed the
>>> Web." Other similar accounts can be easily found
>>> online of users who prefer "the warm glow of
>>> a green screen full of text over the cold
>>> blockiness of a graphical interface."
>>
>> Like most of us, I do mostly have a text-based view
>> of life although, under X Emacs lets me view office
>> docs, JPEGS and PDFs and surfing with w3m under X is
>> hardly "text-only".
>
> I use X as well to watch documentaries (and
> "Survivor") and to see my gnuplots and the result of
> my LaTeX - and, sometimes it is useful to Google the
> name of a tool and see its picture before you go to
> the shop.
>
> These are just examples but they are good examples.
>
> The idea is not to never use graphics, but rather do
> that when there is reason to do so and when there is
> not, instead present a uniform text display *and*
> input interface.
>
> The "cold blockiness of a graphical interface" is
> a good way to put it. I also think there is the aspect
> of authenticity or at least the perception of what is
> real. When you look at a good looking webpage or
> something else graphical the first time, it looks
> great and you are impressed. But the nth time, no
> matter how good it looks, your eye is so trained it
> still doesn't look real. It looks artificial. And it
> is! And it gets worse because to an extent you know or
> can guess how: this is HTML, this is CSS, this is
> JavaScript, this is...
>
> It is too much. So I just want text - like this, if
> you don't mind switching to X:
>
>    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/pics/text-mail.png
>
>

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