General advice beyond Org

General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

Hello,

_I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my 
advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously 
not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about 
it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved.

Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human 
biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could 
interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid 
Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where 
one can simply use free software on a daily basis?

It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. She 
is a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future 
for me (whether with her or other people).

As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just 
nod and wave your freedom good bye?

Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to 
discourage you from answering, please).

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Peter Neilson]

On Thu, 17 May 2018 20:28:22 -0400, <edgar@openmail.cc> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my  
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously  
> not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about  
> it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved.
>
> Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human  
> biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could  
> interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid  
> Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where  
> one can simply use free software on a daily basis?
>
> It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. She  
> is a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future  
> for me (whether with her or other people).
>
> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just  
> nod and wave your freedom good bye?
>
> Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to  
> discourage you from answering, please).

What is your field? In some areas of research the foremost software tools  
have been developed on a MS platform and there is no escape unless you go  
and develop your own tools.

Allow me to illustrate from a non-software perspective, in two different  
directions. I happen to own a substantial number of horses, and thus find  
myself employing the services of a farrier. That's the person who trims  
the hooves and fits shoes. My previous farrier, now retired, made some of  
his own tools and avoided using the top, well-known brand, GE. (It's GE  
Forge & Tools, NOT General Electric!) "Too expensive," he said. "Not worth  
all that extra money." My current farrier works three times as fast as the  
other guy, and uses nothing but GE tools. Clearly, he can fit in perhaps  
twice the number of customers a day, and the tools pay for themselves. He  
could make his own, as can anyone who owns a forge, an anvil, and hammers,  
but why bother? He makes perhaps $300 an hour when working on horses, and  
nearly nothing when trying to build tools.

I also get questions from young folks between the ages of 8 and 16 who  
love horses, and want a career working with horses. They hope for a job  
where they will clean stalls and exercise horses, and maybe help with  
training. My suggestion to them is to find a profession such as accounting  
or medicine where they will be able to make enough money to own several  
horses. After a day cleaning stalls and brushing horses at minimum wage or  
less, who wants to saddle up Yet Another Horse and go riding? The  
accountant who can fathom the intricacies of expenses for a Thoroughbred  
race stable will be well rewarded, and may even get invited to ride.

These words are rather far afield from your actual question, but I think  
you do need to reflect carefully on where your interests actually lie.

So back to free software itself. Read, if you have not already done so,  
this article by rms:  
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html . Then  
ponder whether you want your career to follow his delightfully weird  
footsteps, or whether your field requires a totally different approach.  
I'm sure that rms would disagree with me--he has every time I've spoken  
with him--but his is not the only philosophy available.

Re: [O] General advice beyond Org

[Bob Newell]

Aloha,

Sometimes you need to pick your battles.

In a place I once worked at, there were two environments. One was
extremely restrictive and you were only allowed to use specific
products ... so I had to use abominations like Word and Outlook. (In
the other environment, I could do as I wished.) It was otherwise a
good job, and I liked it, so I put up with the rules. It was neither a
battle I could win nor a battle worth fighting.

Was it harder to work without Emacs and the many tools that made me
more productive? Yes. But again, that came with the territory, and I
didn't think it was worth quitting over.

In your case, in grad school, I of course don't know your environment,
or what proprietary tools you're being told to use vs. what FOSS tools
might be available. Certainly things like Scilab, Sage Math, R, etc.
will do a lot, but your needs may be much greater.
If your evaluation (and you need to do a careful evaluation of the
merits and demerits of both your approach and her approach) is that
it's better to go with what your adviser asks, then you should do so.
No, I wouldn't like it either. But I don't think (unlike RMS, perhaps)
that there are show-stopping moral or ethical issues here.

If your evaluation truly tells you that your way is best, then you
need to come up with a plan of action, with alternatives. I'd suggest
that a good enough evaluation could possibly sway your adviser.

Best of luck to you.

Re: General advice beyond Org

[S. Champailler]

Be aware that free software is politcally loaded. It's just not a matter of having the right or best tools, it' sometimes a question of ideal, that is something that is *very* hard to negociate about...

Moreover, if the people you work with use, say Word, it's pretty tough to bring in, say Latex. Because you'll disrupt the organisation of the team.

In the case of emacs, though, things are easier : it's made to work with text files and that is quite compatible with any other proprietary software. You won't affect anybody's job with that.

Here at my job, I don't control any of the software I use (I have to use Oracle, Windows, Skype), but I can choose the software that *I* use for myself. So it's a balance.

Changing other's mind, or methods is super hard, what you experience is just the normal. It'd be nice to know why your advisor rejects free software equivalents (lack of features ? fear of legal battles ? organisational ...)

Stefan


> Le 18 mai 2018 à 02:28, edgar@openmail.cc a écrit :
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my 
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously 
> not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about 
> it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved.
> 
> Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human 
> biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could 
> interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid 
> Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where 
> one can simply use free software on a daily basis?
> 
> It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. She 
> is a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future 
> for me (whether with her or other people).
> 
> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just 
> nod and wave your freedom good bye?
> 
> Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to 
> discourage you from answering, please).
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> 
> ONLY AT VFEmail! - Use our Metadata Mitigator to keep your email out of the NSA's hands!
> $24.95 ONETIME Lifetime accounts with Privacy Features!  
> 15GB disk! No bandwidth quotas!
> Commercial and Bulk Mail Options!  
>

Re: [O] General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

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On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 04:44:39PM -1000, Bob Newell wrote:
> Aloha,
> 
> Sometimes you need to pick your battles.

While I'd tend to agree with Bob that you might have to choose
a "flexible response", bear in mind that your instructor has
already signalled that she's not willing to cater to your
standpoint.

If you want to change your environment, and you want, because
you'll have to live in it, try to network, to reach out to
others in your position. Being in academia, you'll interact
with many co-researchers in other institutions. Make a habit
of carefully enquiring about their environment.

Cheers & good luck
- -- tomás
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

On 2018-05-18 07:12, S. Champailler wrote:
> Be aware that free software is politcally loaded. It's just not a
> matter of having the right or best tools, it' sometimes a question of
> ideal, that is something that is *very* hard to negociate about...
> 
> Moreover, if the people you work with use, say Word, it's pretty tough
> to bring in, say Latex. Because you'll disrupt the organisation of the
> team.
> 
> In the case of emacs, though, things are easier : it's made to work
> with text files and that is quite compatible with any other
> proprietary software. You won't affect anybody's job with that.
> 
> Here at my job, I don't control any of the software I use (I have to
> use Oracle, Windows, Skype), but I can choose the software that *I*
> use for myself. So it's a balance.
> 
> Changing other's mind, or methods is super hard, what you experience
> is just the normal. It'd be nice to know why your advisor rejects free
> software equivalents (lack of features ? fear of legal battles ?
> organisational ...)
> 
> Stefan

Merci, Stefan. I have tried to understand her point, and I can dissect 
it into:

1. She does not see the advantage of having to learn how to use anything 
else. It works well for her, why change and waste time on doing it?

2. She likes and is used to the "features" of the software (today, I 
discovered that one of these is the so-called "track changes"; I swear I 
have tried to introduce her to Git, not that she cares).

3. I think that she is used to the interface.

4. She says (and I have no reason to question) that the whole department 
uses the proprietary software that she uses. It is an imposition to 
others (including her) to ask them to use something different.

It is only when we have to collaborate directly that the issue arises. I 
guess that it's a similar situation as you are having (programming? she 
does not care, I can do whatever I want; publication abstract? she wants 
a DOCX or DOC). What I find unfathomable is that I can produce the 
format that she needs (even with style) with free software (thanks 
community!), but what I perceive as her reluctance to my software (or 
just plain miscommunication) prevents her from informing me or me 
understanding what exactly it is that she considers important. In other 
words, she does not seem to want to deal with it in any way.

I'm sorry, I didn't want to make this very long. I hope that I explained 
myself.

The count goes like this (so that everyone knows that I am listening, 
the count is by far the least important):
- Yield partially (1) :: You will have to work with proprietary software 
in some way, but not always.
- There is no escape (1) :: You will have to work with proprietary 
software

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

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On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 09:12:42AM +0200, S. Champailler wrote:
> Be aware that free software is politcally loaded. It's just not a matter of having the right or best tools, it' sometimes a question of ideal, that is something that is *very* hard to negociate about...

Well, because in a way, it *is* political. As the stance to "keep
out politics" at all costs is political too.

> Moreover, if the people you work with use, say Word, it's pretty tough to bring in, say Latex. Because you'll disrupt the organisation of the team.

I've been able to cope with that to some extent by using Org mode
as a "hub" -- I can export as LaTeX for my viewing pleasure and as
(LibreOffice) ODF, which can be converted into Word for other people's
viewing pleasure.

Now a way back from Word to Org would be bliss, but is more thorny...

Now I just try to (help) lobby politicians to drop proprietary
formats. We're 1 against 1000 (perhaps even worse if you count
dollars instead of people), but we're getting better!

> Changing other's mind, or methods is super hard, what you experience is just the normal. It'd be nice to know why your advisor rejects free software equivalents (lack of features ? fear of legal battles ? organisational ...)

This is a very important point, and one without which no change
will be possible: Whenever I try to convince someone to change
her tools I just imagine how I would react if someone tried to
pry my beloved Emacs from my hands.

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

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On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:10:08AM +0000, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:
> On 2018-05-18 07:12, S. Champailler wrote:
> >Be aware that free software is politcally loaded [...]

[...]

> I'm sorry, I didn't want to make this very long. I hope that I
> explained myself.

I don't know about the others, but I find this topic extremely
interesting, since it touches many of us. In my concrete example,
I was submerged in a corp for six years and ultimately moved on,
just because of this issue.

And your approach to the topic is even-headed and clear: I'm
able to learn a lot from it, so thanks!

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 16:44:39 -1000
> From: Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: [O] General advice beyond Org
> 	

> If your evaluation (and you need to do a careful evaluation of the
> merits and demerits of both your approach and her approach) is that
> it's better to go with what your adviser asks, then you should do so.
> No, I wouldn't like it either. But I don't think (unlike RMS, perhaps)
> that there are show-stopping moral or ethical issues here.
> 
> If your evaluation truly tells you that your way is best, then you
> need to come up with a plan of action, with alternatives. I'd suggest
> that a good enough evaluation could possibly sway your adviser.
> 
> Best of luck to you.
> 

Thank you, Bob (I'm sorry for not knowing any Hawaiian other than 
aloha). I truly believe that my way is best (she likes track changes, 
but I am almost sure that has never tried Git, subversion, mercurial or 
anything like that). On the other hand, I really think that she is still 
not going to like it if I try to persuade her (I think that there was a 
previous student trying to use LaTeX, for instance, and she really 
dislikes it for some reason; I don't really know).

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 09:32:11 +0200
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: [O] General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <20180518073211.GD4556@tuxteam.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; x-action=pgp-signed
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 04:44:39PM -1000, Bob Newell wrote:
>> Aloha,
>> 
>> Sometimes you need to pick your battles.
> 
> While I'd tend to agree with Bob that you might have to choose
> a "flexible response", bear in mind that your instructor has
> already signalled that she's not willing to cater to your
> standpoint.

Indeed. That is quite clear.

> 
> If you want to change your environment, and you want, because
> you'll have to live in it, try to network, to reach out to
> others in your position. Being in academia, you'll interact
> with many co-researchers in other institutions. Make a habit
> of carefully enquiring about their environment.

I have only found one user of Emacs so far (in a representative group of 
~50), an old-time Professor who uses Wundoe$ (the unoperating system; I 
hope that you like my jokes :D ). I will keep doing it.

> 
> Cheers & good luck

Thanks, I'll need it.


> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 21:52:29 -0400
> From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson@windstream.net>
> To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, edgar@openmail.cc
> Subject: Re: [O] General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <op.zi6str12rns8nc@odin>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; delsp=yes
> 
> 
> What is your field? In some areas of research the foremost software 
> tools
> have been developed on a MS platform and there is no escape unless you 
> go
> and develop your own tools.

Are you aware of a place where they would allow me to do this? I have no 
problem with that.


> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 09:12:42 +0200 (CEST)
> From: "S. Champailler" <schampaillerspam@skynet.be>
> To: edgar@openmail.cc, emacs-orgmode@gnu.org, help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID:
> 	<441378060.337754.1526627562985@webmail.appsuite.proximus.be>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Be aware that free software is politcally loaded. It's just not a
> matter of having the right or best tools, it' sometimes a question of
> ideal, that is something that is *very* hard to negociate about...
> 

Thanks, Stefan. I already sent you an answer. I will wait for the digest 
next time.

> ---------------------------------
Thanks to everyone!

The count goes like this (so that everyone knows that I am listening, 
the count is by far the least important):
- Yield partially (2) :: You will have to work with proprietary software 
in some way, but not always.
- There is no escape (1) :: You will have to work with proprietary 
software
- Find a different environment (1) :: There is a place, you need to find 
it.
- I know a place (0) :: I know XXX group or XXX person which only uses 
free software

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Yuri Khan]

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 7:29 AM <edgar@openmail.cc> wrote:

> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously
> not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about
> it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is wa[i]ved.

> Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human
> biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could
> interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid
> Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where
> one can simply use free software on a daily basis?

Are you required to pay for licenses for proprietary software you are asked
to use? Chances are, your school is getting academic discounts, and you get
to use it for no charge.

Your instructors and professors probably have a lot of experience with
those tools. They are understandably reluctant to switch, because the tools
work well enough for them.

Also, as a student, you do not have sufficient influence to convert
everybody at your school to free software.

> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just
> nod and wave your freedom good bye?

The point of education is to get exposed to many tools, techniques and
workflows. By limiting yourself to free software only, you will miss out.

Be a scout in the proprietary camp. Learn the tools your instructors are
willing to teach. Learn what it takes to achieve the same results with free
software. Learn the difference in workflows and user experience.

You will find something you can do with free software that you don’t know
how to do with proprietary tools. Ask your teachers. They will either point
you at something you missed (and then you can study it); or they will admit
that feature is nice but their tool doesn’t have it (and then you have
demonstrated the merits of free software); or they will say it’s not
important.

You will also likely find more than a few points where non-free software
delivers better UX. Use that knowledge to improve free software so that it
can compete with proprietary software on UX terms, not only on the issue of
freedom.

Re: General advice beyond Org

[S. Champailler]

This is a super wise advice :

>> Be a scout in the proprietary camp. Learn the tools your instructors are
>> willing to teach. Learn what it takes to achieve the same results with free
>> software. Learn the difference in workflows and user experience.

Comparing stuff in scenarios you don't invent yourself is super enlightening. Once you don't define the scenario, all sorts of edge/unexpected situations arise.

For example, if you work with math stuff, I'm sure you'll find interesting differences between computations results (e.g. matlab equations solving versus say Octave).

stF







> Le 18 mai 2018 à 12:54, Yuri Khan <yurivkhan@gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 7:29 AM <edgar@openmail.cc> wrote:
> 
> > _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my
> > advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously
> > not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about
> > it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is wa[i]ved.
> 
> > Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human
> > biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could
> > interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid
> > Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where
> > one can simply use free software on a daily basis?
> 
> Are you required to pay for licenses for proprietary software you are asked
> to use? Chances are, your school is getting academic discounts, and you get
> to use it for no charge.
> 
> Your instructors and professors probably have a lot of experience with
> those tools. They are understandably reluctant to switch, because the tools
> work well enough for them.
> 
> Also, as a student, you do not have sufficient influence to convert
> everybody at your school to free software.
> 
> > As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just
> > nod and wave your freedom good bye?
> 
> The point of education is to get exposed to many tools, techniques and
> workflows. By limiting yourself to free software only, you will miss out.
> 
> Be a scout in the proprietary camp. Learn the tools your instructors are
> willing to teach. Learn what it takes to achieve the same results with free
> software. Learn the difference in workflows and user experience.
> 
> You will find something you can do with free software that you don’t know
> how to do with proprietary tools. Ask your teachers. They will either point
> you at something you missed (and then you can study it); or they will admit
> that feature is nice but their tool doesn’t have it (and then you have
> demonstrated the merits of free software); or they will say it’s not
> important.
> 
> You will also likely find more than a few points where non-free software
> delivers better UX. Use that knowledge to improve free software so that it
> can compete with proprietary software on UX terms, not only on the issue of
> freedom.
>

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Diego Zamboni]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5181 bytes --]

Hi Edgar,

As in many other contexts, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. As a grad student, is your goal to learn about your field, to do interesting work/research, and to eventually graduate? Or is it to defend your ideals and use the software you like? If it’s the second, by all means the software you use should be a central consideration (to the point of looking for other places of study, as suggested in your original post). But if it’s the first (as it should, IMO), then the central considerations change: is your professor good/nice/competent (insert your own criteria here)? Does she foster your work/research in productive ways? Does she give you good challenges and research topics? Only you can answer those questions.

You can always compromise. Not all of us get to use only the tools we like all day long. In my case, I like my job very much, despite the fact that I have to use tools like Exchange, Sharepoint and Jira. But at home, during my free time, I get to code and use whatever tools I want (e.g. Emacs, org-mode, Elvish, Hammerspoon).  I get to use some of them at work too, but I am aware that I have to stick to the accepted standards of communication and collaboration with others.

From what you say, the tools your advisor uses are the recognized/accepted ones for doing the work. You could try to challenge this status quo, given enough time and energy. But again, think about what your goals are. You have to choose your battles. In any case, after you graduate, you can go on an be much more selective about (or even, define yourself) the tools with which you work.

As a former grad student myself, I can give you two pieces of wisdom I received over the years, one from my Ph.D. advisor, and one from one of my colleagues. Both express the same feeling:

“You may think now that getting your Ph.D. is the goal, but it’s only the beginning. The Ph.D. only opens the door for whatever you want to do next”
“The goal of a Ph.D. is to finish it”

All the best,

—Diego


> On 18 May 2018, at 10:10, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:
> 
> On 2018-05-18 07:12, S. Champailler wrote:
>> Be aware that free software is politcally loaded. It's just not a
>> matter of having the right or best tools, it' sometimes a question of
>> ideal, that is something that is *very* hard to negociate about...
>> Moreover, if the people you work with use, say Word, it's pretty tough
>> to bring in, say Latex. Because you'll disrupt the organisation of the
>> team.
>> In the case of emacs, though, things are easier : it's made to work
>> with text files and that is quite compatible with any other
>> proprietary software. You won't affect anybody's job with that.
>> Here at my job, I don't control any of the software I use (I have to
>> use Oracle, Windows, Skype), but I can choose the software that *I*
>> use for myself. So it's a balance.
>> Changing other's mind, or methods is super hard, what you experience
>> is just the normal. It'd be nice to know why your advisor rejects free
>> software equivalents (lack of features ? fear of legal battles ?
>> organisational ...)
>> Stefan
> 
> Merci, Stefan. I have tried to understand her point, and I can dissect it into:
> 
> 1. She does not see the advantage of having to learn how to use anything else. It works well for her, why change and waste time on doing it?
> 
> 2. She likes and is used to the "features" of the software (today, I discovered that one of these is the so-called "track changes"; I swear I have tried to introduce her to Git, not that she cares).
> 
> 3. I think that she is used to the interface.
> 
> 4. She says (and I have no reason to question) that the whole department uses the proprietary software that she uses. It is an imposition to others (including her) to ask them to use something different.
> 
> It is only when we have to collaborate directly that the issue arises. I guess that it's a similar situation as you are having (programming? she does not care, I can do whatever I want; publication abstract? she wants a DOCX or DOC). What I find unfathomable is that I can produce the format that she needs (even with style) with free software (thanks community!), but what I perceive as her reluctance to my software (or just plain miscommunication) prevents her from informing me or me understanding what exactly it is that she considers important. In other words, she does not seem to want to deal with it in any way.
> 
> I'm sorry, I didn't want to make this very long. I hope that I explained myself.
> 
> The count goes like this (so that everyone knows that I am listening, the count is by far the least important):
> - Yield partially (1) :: You will have to work with proprietary software in some way, but not always.
> - There is no escape (1) :: You will have to work with proprietary software
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> 
> ONLY AT VFEmail! - Use our Metadata Mitigator to keep your email out of the NSA's hands!
> $24.95 ONETIME Lifetime accounts with Privacy Features!  15GB disk! No bandwidth quotas!
> Commercial and Bulk Mail Options!  


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6478 bytes --]

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Kevin Buchs]

As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms. Using the
proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own. If it
were the case that you needed to buy your own, then I would ask your
supervisor for another solution.

Even as a Junior faculty member, you may be in close collaboration with
other faculty and should follow the consensus. That is how you work with
other people effectively. You don't keep asserting that your solution is
better. When you are calling the shots, you can use the tools you wish.

So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting the
issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that is
not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools and
don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools you
use is no reason to switch graduate programs.

This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.

Kevin Buchs

On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 7:28 PM, <edgar@openmail.cc> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am obviously not
> in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have discussions about it. She
> pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved.
>
> Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human
> biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could
> interact with free software? (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid
> Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). Is there no place where one
> can simply use free software on a daily basis?
>
> It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. She is
> a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future for
> me (whether with her or other people).
>
> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just nod
> and wave your freedom good bye?
>
> Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to
> discourage you from answering, please).
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> ONLY AT VFEmail! - Use our Metadata Mitigator to keep your email out of
> the NSA's hands!
> $24.95 ONETIME Lifetime accounts with Privacy Features!  15GB disk! No
> bandwidth quotas!
> Commercial and Bulk Mail Options!
>

Re: General advice beyond Org

[hymie!]

In our last episode, the evil Dr. Lacto had captured our hero,
  edgar@openmail.cc <edgar@openmail.cc>, who said:

> I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my 
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. [...]
>
> Is anyone here aware of a place where they do computational human 
> biomechanics, mechanics, materials or finite elements where I could 
> interact with free software?

First question -- it sounds like you are doing very specific research
with very specific tools, software, equations, and things like that.
Are you sure that free software exists that will do what you want?

For example, good luck finding free software that will do your taxes.

> Do you just nod and wave your freedom good bye?

Second question -- you keep using that word "free".  Are you really "free"
in this situation?  You said you are getting tuition covered and a
stipend.  The way employment typically works is that, in return for
salary and/or compensation, you give your full devotion to your employer's
wants and needs instead of your own.  Using your employer's software is
not a huge jump.

I don't mean this as a personal attack.  That's how it works.  I am
"free" to wear a t-shirt that says "F**K THE POLICE" on it, but the
person who pays my salary would prefer if, for 40 hours each week, I
wear a different shirt.  I am "free" to ignore his request.  He is "free"
to stop paying my salary.

So I'm afraid that's my answer.  Suck it up and do what the nice person
who is giving you lots of money wants you to do, they way he/she wants
you to do it.

--hymie!     http://lactose.homelinux.net/~hymie    hymie@lactose.homelinux.net

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Aaron Ecay]

Hi Edgar,

2018ko maiatzak 18an, -ek idatzi zuen:

> It is only when we have to collaborate directly that the issue
> arises. 

It sounds like the issue you are having is about collaboration workflow,
and not about the usage of free software per se.  Reading between the
lines, it sounds like your biggest difficulty is with Microsoft Word.
Itʼs very unlikely that you will be able to convince your advisor to
switch to another program when writing with you.  As Diego said, it is
ultimately up to you whether you can live with this.  But there are
certainly compromises you could entertain that might make it easier.

There are important benefits, to a field and to individual researchers,
of open analyses.  On the other hand, what maters about a scientific
publication is principally the words themselves and where they are
published – not the workflow that was used to create them, which mostly
passes into irrelevance once they become part of the scientific record.
So you might find pragmatic benefits to focusing on free software
analysis tools and programming languages, and on the importance of
publicly releasing analysis materials (whether based on free software or
not) at an appropriate stage of the research, rather than on document
authorship workflow where your advisor seems to have a particularly
entrenched position.

Another suggestion to reach out to other graduate students, who have the
surplus of time* and lack of pre-established workflow habits conducive to
learning new techniques.  This wonʼt directly solve your issues with
your advisor, but if you are contributing to the success of free
software in other areas you might feel like your sacrifices with her are
being balanced out.

(*Having been a graduate student, Iʼm only too aware of the falsity of
the premise that grad students have ample free time in an absolute
sense.  But relative to other career stages, grad students are probably
the best situated in that regard.  Itʼs also true that there are many
things that grad students need to learn that could be learned either
with free or nonfree software.  The marginal time cost of replacing
nonfree software in that learning with free software is likely to be
small.)

Itʼs also true that free software has network effects.  Once someone is
using R or Python, they are introduced to things like Jupyter or knitr
(which are literate programming systems) – or even org mode.  They also
get exposed to VCS (like git), free text editors (like emacs, or RStudio),
and other tools that do not directly replace Word but contribute to an
alternate ecosystem.  They might eventually be induced to switch their
writing software of choice because of the features of such environments.
So by evangelizing the pieces of free software that are most appetizing
to others in your field, you are laying the groundwork for subsequent
improvements that might initially be a harder sell.

Finally, a very pragmatic suggestion.  You might suggest to your advisor
that you and her collaborate via Google Docs rather than MS Word.  This
is something I have found helpful with colleagues of mine who are not
otherwise prepared to change their writing habits.  The Google Docs
interface is very similar to Word (but actually avoids some of the
radical UI changes that MS has made recently, which might make it even
more appetizing to certain users).  While Gdocs is not free software (as
itʼs important to point out), it enables me to use less proprietary
software, on average.  Iʼve never been able to get Libreoffice to work
satisfactorily for iterative edits to a Word doc; I find that it too
often loses formatting, included images, or otherwise doesnʼt
interoperate with Word well enough.  So in the absence of Google Docs I
would have to maintain a Windows system on which to use Word.  With
Gdocs I have one browser tab that runs unfree JS, but the rest of my
system is GNU/Linux.  (There are also benefits to the online-first
nature of Google Docs, which avoids the emailing back and forth of
dueling versions of a Word document that I have sometimes encountered in
groups that primarily use Word – but these are orthogonal to the
free/nonfree distinction.)

I hope that some of this comes as useful advice.

-- 
Aaron Ecay

Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:50:32AM -0500, Kevin Buchs wrote:
> As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
> recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms.

Nobody talks about dictating anything. Some supervisors are more
enlightened than other, so trying to talk to them doesn't seem
wrong.

>                                                            Using the
> proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own.

With that I disagree strongly: free is not primarily about price
(more so in the OP's case, as he stated clearly). Reducing "free"
to price totally misses the point, IMO.

[...]

> So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting the
> issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that is
> not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools and
> don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools you
> use is no reason to switch graduate programs.

This whole paragraph comes across as somewhat... condescending.

> This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
> selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.

Definitely. And part of this getting along is trying to negotiate
what matters to oneself and to others. I do agree that an intransigent
attitude isn't helpful, but Edgar didn't show something like that.

Fostering free software is exactly about "not being selfish".

Cheers
- -- tomás
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlr+8e0ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kax+wCfbKhTlIUw6n2SL106P2GgS4qa
SWYAnjKwfLqGw5KnPqBCPPb1GHutiLfQ
=szdJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Alan E. Davis]

I worked as a teacher in a school in a third world context, where the
district was severely underfunded.  I held out as much as I could.  I had
to use proprietary systems, eventually, to report attendance and grades, so
I installed Virtual Box.  It was a long and hard battle: printer drivers
were not up to snuff; networking was difficult compared to the M$
approach.  Back in the day---I started using GNU/Linux in the pre-1.0
kernel days---many things did not work smoothly, but the Linux
Documentation Project was a breath of fresh air, and a beam of light
enlightened the scene.  (As an aside, I note with misgivings that the LDP
is not well maintained---but I am partially responsible for this, because I
didn't work on documentation as perhaps I ought to have.  Then again, the
state of the "Linux Desktop" is such that other supports are available and
many of the hands on configuration and administration tasks are either
automatic or much simpler and more intuitive.).

I would suggest, in your context, that you do not have to abandon free
software, nor, I sense, are you advised to refuse to use the infrastructure
that has been given.  I use emacs for much, I really like org-mode a lot
and even thought I am not able to take advantage of many of the more
sophisticated tools of org-mode.  You may find, like many before you, that
the tools of free and open source software many streamline your workflow,
and give you an edge, even while you are using the ordained tools for your
specific disciplinary work.  When people see that the free and open tools
work for you, gradually you may make inroads, and not at the expense of
your career.

I believe this approach has been behind much of the achieved success of
Free and Open Source software and operating systems.

I am rooting for you.

Alan Davis


On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:50:32AM -0500, Kevin Buchs wrote:
> > As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
> > recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms.
>
> Nobody talks about dictating anything. Some supervisors are more
> enlightened than other, so trying to talk to them doesn't seem
> wrong.
>
> >                                                            Using the
> > proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own.
>
> With that I disagree strongly: free is not primarily about price
> (more so in the OP's case, as he stated clearly). Reducing "free"
> to price totally misses the point, IMO.
>
> [...]
>
> > So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting
> the
> > issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that is
> > not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools and
> > don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools
> you
> > use is no reason to switch graduate programs.
>
> This whole paragraph comes across as somewhat... condescending.
>
> > This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
> > selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.
>
> Definitely. And part of this getting along is trying to negotiate
> what matters to oneself and to others. I do agree that an intransigent
> attitude isn't helpful, but Edgar didn't show something like that.
>
> Fostering free software is exactly about "not being selfish".
>
> Cheers
> - -- tomás
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAlr+8e0ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kax+wCfbKhTlIUw6n2SL106P2GgS4qa
> SWYAnjKwfLqGw5KnPqBCPPb1GHutiLfQ
> =szdJ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>


-- 
[Fill in the blanks]

The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning
disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of
view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.

             ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Alan E. Davis]

I failed to mention in my previous message that the powers that be in the
underfunded district where I worked were fully on board with the
proprietary tools that they had been given in colleges and high schools.
After a few years, I held a workshop and several teachers were able to
install Ubuntu, some of whom may be working with GNU/Linux today.

Alan

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 9:19 AM, Alan E. Davis <lngndvs@gmail.com> wrote:

> I worked as a teacher in a school in a third world context, where the
> district was severely underfunded.  I held out as much as I could.  I had
> to use proprietary systems, eventually, to report attendance and grades, so
> I installed Virtual Box.  It was a long and hard battle: printer drivers
> were not up to snuff; networking was difficult compared to the M$
> approach.  Back in the day---I started using GNU/Linux in the pre-1.0
> kernel days---many things did not work smoothly, but the Linux
> Documentation Project was a breath of fresh air, and a beam of light
> enlightened the scene.  (As an aside, I note with misgivings that the LDP
> is not well maintained---but I am partially responsible for this, because I
> didn't work on documentation as perhaps I ought to have.  Then again, the
> state of the "Linux Desktop" is such that other supports are available and
> many of the hands on configuration and administration tasks are either
> automatic or much simpler and more intuitive.).
>
> I would suggest, in your context, that you do not have to abandon free
> software, nor, I sense, are you advised to refuse to use the infrastructure
> that has been given.  I use emacs for much, I really like org-mode a lot
> and even thought I am not able to take advantage of many of the more
> sophisticated tools of org-mode.  You may find, like many before you, that
> the tools of free and open source software many streamline your workflow,
> and give you an edge, even while you are using the ordained tools for your
> specific disciplinary work.  When people see that the free and open tools
> work for you, gradually you may make inroads, and not at the expense of
> your career.
>
> I believe this approach has been behind much of the achieved success of
> Free and Open Source software and operating systems.
>
> I am rooting for you.
>
> Alan Davis
>
>
> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:50:32AM -0500, Kevin Buchs wrote:
>> > As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
>> > recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms.
>>
>> Nobody talks about dictating anything. Some supervisors are more
>> enlightened than other, so trying to talk to them doesn't seem
>> wrong.
>>
>> >                                                            Using the
>> > proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own.
>>
>> With that I disagree strongly: free is not primarily about price
>> (more so in the OP's case, as he stated clearly). Reducing "free"
>> to price totally misses the point, IMO.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting
>> the
>> > issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that is
>> > not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools
>> and
>> > don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools
>> you
>> > use is no reason to switch graduate programs.
>>
>> This whole paragraph comes across as somewhat... condescending.
>>
>> > This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
>> > selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.
>>
>> Definitely. And part of this getting along is trying to negotiate
>> what matters to oneself and to others. I do agree that an intransigent
>> attitude isn't helpful, but Edgar didn't show something like that.
>>
>> Fostering free software is exactly about "not being selfish".
>>
>> Cheers
>> - -- tomás
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAlr+8e0ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kax+wCfbKhTlIUw6n2SL106P2GgS4qa
>> SWYAnjKwfLqGw5KnPqBCPPb1GHutiLfQ
>> =szdJ
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> [Fill in the blanks]
>
> The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
> outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
> alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning
> disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of
> view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.
>
>              ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)
>
>
>



-- 
[Fill in the blanks]

The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning
disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of
view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.

             ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Jason Yamada-Hanff]

Don't die on this hill. Collaborating with others, especially superiors,
means sometimes adjusting. I split the difference in grad school and used
emacs and other free software where I could and MS where it made
collaboration possible. My first piece of writing was handed to my advisor
as LaTeX. He asked me to convert it to Word, and I did. I wrote my thesis
in LaTeX. When we turned a chapter into a paper, I converted it to Word
before we started collaborating on it. When I handed him my lab notebook as
a series of org-mode files he could search instantly by text, he liked
that. Sometimes you win.

Your professors arguments are good. Her tools work well for her. Why should
she switch to new ones? Your moral principles aren't going to have a lot of
away. Further, git and other version control does not provide the full
features of Track Changes in Word.

Sent from phone

On Fri, May 18, 2018, 9:20 AM Alan E. Davis <lngndvs@gmail.com> wrote:

> I worked as a teacher in a school in a third world context, where the
> district was severely underfunded.  I held out as much as I could.  I had
> to use proprietary systems, eventually, to report attendance and grades, so
> I installed Virtual Box.  It was a long and hard battle: printer drivers
> were not up to snuff; networking was difficult compared to the M$
> approach.  Back in the day---I started using GNU/Linux in the pre-1.0
> kernel days---many things did not work smoothly, but the Linux
> Documentation Project was a breath of fresh air, and a beam of light
> enlightened the scene.  (As an aside, I note with misgivings that the LDP
> is not well maintained---but I am partially responsible for this, because I
> didn't work on documentation as perhaps I ought to have.  Then again, the
> state of the "Linux Desktop" is such that other supports are available and
> many of the hands on configuration and administration tasks are either
> automatic or much simpler and more intuitive.).
>
> I would suggest, in your context, that you do not have to abandon free
> software, nor, I sense, are you advised to refuse to use the infrastructure
> that has been given.  I use emacs for much, I really like org-mode a lot
> and even thought I am not able to take advantage of many of the more
> sophisticated tools of org-mode.  You may find, like many before you, that
> the tools of free and open source software many streamline your workflow,
> and give you an edge, even while you are using the ordained tools for your
> specific disciplinary work.  When people see that the free and open tools
> work for you, gradually you may make inroads, and not at the expense of
> your career.
>
> I believe this approach has been behind much of the achieved success of
> Free and Open Source software and operating systems.
>
> I am rooting for you.
>
> Alan Davis
>
>
> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:50:32AM -0500, Kevin Buchs wrote:
> > > As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
> > > recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms.
> >
> > Nobody talks about dictating anything. Some supervisors are more
> > enlightened than other, so trying to talk to them doesn't seem
> > wrong.
> >
> > >                                                            Using the
> > > proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own.
> >
> > With that I disagree strongly: free is not primarily about price
> > (more so in the OP's case, as he stated clearly). Reducing "free"
> > to price totally misses the point, IMO.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting
> > the
> > > issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that
> is
> > > not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools
> and
> > > don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools
> > you
> > > use is no reason to switch graduate programs.
> >
> > This whole paragraph comes across as somewhat... condescending.
> >
> > > This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
> > > selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.
> >
> > Definitely. And part of this getting along is trying to negotiate
> > what matters to oneself and to others. I do agree that an intransigent
> > attitude isn't helpful, but Edgar didn't show something like that.
> >
> > Fostering free software is exactly about "not being selfish".
> >
> > Cheers
> > - -- tomás
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
> >
> > iEYEARECAAYFAlr+8e0ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kax+wCfbKhTlIUw6n2SL106P2GgS4qa
> > SWYAnjKwfLqGw5KnPqBCPPb1GHutiLfQ
> > =szdJ
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> [Fill in the blanks]
>
> The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
> outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
> alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning
> disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of
> view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.
>
>              ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)
>

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Devin Prater]

I agree with this. As a blind user of Emacs, with Emacspeak, I know that
sometimes people must use non-free software, like Voxin TTS on Linux, or
MacinTalk on macOS, to get speech synthesis that is enjoyable to use.
But I do use as much free software as I can to get work done, which is
mainly just sticking to Emacs because somehow I can remember all the key
commands and my reading comprehension is amazing there, relative to
using screen reading, content-unaware systems for the blind. Most blind
people, though, use Windows, Microsoft Word, and a screen reader that
costs $1099+ and yet could never measure up to Emacspeak, well besides
web content but I’m sure that if EWW gained Javascript and HTML5
support, I’d never need to leave Emacs, ever. So, my point is, I have to
interact with these other blind people, and people in Assistive Tech
organizations, and I do that well with converting .org files to .docx
with Pandoc, using Twittering-mode in Emacs while other blind Mac users
pay $20 for Twitterific, and Gnus for email, which is used very often by
the blind for list-serves because Email is very accessible for us.
I don’t use Latex, yet, and may never have to because Org is so
powerful, but you could just use Pandoc for that as well. That’s one of
the great things about Free things, they try to work with everything,
while proprietary software tries to lock users in because their way is
supposedly best. Aside: Why am I using a Mac? Accessibility, and great
Text-to-speech built-in.
Jason Yamada-Hanff <jyamada1@gmail.com> writes:

> Don't die on this hill. Collaborating with others, especially superiors,
> means sometimes adjusting. I split the difference in grad school and used
> emacs and other free software where I could and MS where it made
> collaboration possible. My first piece of writing was handed to my advisor
> as LaTeX. He asked me to convert it to Word, and I did. I wrote my thesis
> in LaTeX. When we turned a chapter into a paper, I converted it to Word
> before we started collaborating on it. When I handed him my lab notebook as
> a series of org-mode files he could search instantly by text, he liked
> that. Sometimes you win.
>
> Your professors arguments are good. Her tools work well for her. Why should
> she switch to new ones? Your moral principles aren't going to have a lot of
> away. Further, git and other version control does not provide the full
> features of Track Changes in Word.
>
> Sent from phone
>
> On Fri, May 18, 2018, 9:20 AM Alan E. Davis <lngndvs@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I worked as a teacher in a school in a third world context, where the
>> district was severely underfunded.  I held out as much as I could.  I had
>> to use proprietary systems, eventually, to report attendance and grades, so
>> I installed Virtual Box.  It was a long and hard battle: printer drivers
>> were not up to snuff; networking was difficult compared to the M$
>> approach.  Back in the day---I started using GNU/Linux in the pre-1.0
>> kernel days---many things did not work smoothly, but the Linux
>> Documentation Project was a breath of fresh air, and a beam of light
>> enlightened the scene.  (As an aside, I note with misgivings that the LDP
>> is not well maintained---but I am partially responsible for this, because I
>> didn't work on documentation as perhaps I ought to have.  Then again, the
>> state of the "Linux Desktop" is such that other supports are available and
>> many of the hands on configuration and administration tasks are either
>> automatic or much simpler and more intuitive.).
>>
>> I would suggest, in your context, that you do not have to abandon free
>> software, nor, I sense, are you advised to refuse to use the infrastructure
>> that has been given.  I use emacs for much, I really like org-mode a lot
>> and even thought I am not able to take advantage of many of the more
>> sophisticated tools of org-mode.  You may find, like many before you, that
>> the tools of free and open source software many streamline your workflow,
>> and give you an edge, even while you are using the ordained tools for your
>> specific disciplinary work.  When people see that the free and open tools
>> work for you, gradually you may make inroads, and not at the expense of
>> your career.
>>
>> I believe this approach has been behind much of the achieved success of
>> Free and Open Source software and operating systems.
>>
>> I am rooting for you.
>>
>> Alan Davis
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
>>
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 08:50:32AM -0500, Kevin Buchs wrote:
>> > > As a student, you simply need to go along with your supervisor's
>> > > recommendations. You are not in a position to dictate the terms.
>> >
>> > Nobody talks about dictating anything. Some supervisors are more
>> > enlightened than other, so trying to talk to them doesn't seem
>> > wrong.
>> >
>> > >                                                            Using the
>> > > proprietary tools will not hurt you, unless you need to buy your own.
>> >
>> > With that I disagree strongly: free is not primarily about price
>> > (more so in the OP's case, as he stated clearly). Reducing "free"
>> > to price totally misses the point, IMO.
>> >
>> > [...]
>> >
>> > > So, you need to adjust your attitude. It may be that you are presenting
>> > the
>> > > issue of principles - I prefer free, you prefer proprietary, but that
>> is
>> > > not really the true issue. Maybe you don't know the proprietary tools
>> and
>> > > don't want to learn them or feel you can't learn them. Choice of tools
>> > you
>> > > use is no reason to switch graduate programs.
>> >
>> > This whole paragraph comes across as somewhat... condescending.
>> >
>> > > This is entirely a matter of getting along with other people, not being
>> > > selfish, etc. These are life skills we are talking about.
>> >
>> > Definitely. And part of this getting along is trying to negotiate
>> > what matters to oneself and to others. I do agree that an intransigent
>> > attitude isn't helpful, but Edgar didn't show something like that.
>> >
>> > Fostering free software is exactly about "not being selfish".
>> >
>> > Cheers
>> > - -- tomás
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>> >
>> > iEYEARECAAYFAlr+8e0ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kax+wCfbKhTlIUw6n2SL106P2GgS4qa
>> > SWYAnjKwfLqGw5KnPqBCPPb1GHutiLfQ
>> > =szdJ
>> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> [Fill in the blanks]
>>
>> The use of corrupt manipulations and blatant rhetorical ploys ...---
>> outright lying, flagwaving, personal attacks, setting up phony
>> alternatives, misdirection, jargon-mongering, evading key issues, feigning
>> disinterested objectivity, willful misunderstanding of other points of
>> view---suggests that ... lacks both credibility and evidence.
>>
>>              ---- Edward Tufte (in context of making presentations)
>>

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

2018-05-18T00:28:22+0000 edgar@openmail.cc wrote:
> Hello,
>
> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with

I'm undergraduating (seeking a bachelor's degree in organization
management). :D

> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with
> my advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am
> obviously not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have

At first glance I would recommend you to keep using free/libre software
only, and advocating for it where you live, work and study. But please
read on...

> discussions about it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my
> tuition is waved.

... Now this is a tricky challenge. Not that difficult, but as far as I
can see these are the options:

a) worst: make the compromise and use these non-free tools in your
   computer (the same applies when using a virtual machine or a
   container), because all-in-alll, it's still your personal
   computer. Besides, the virtual machine or container can misbehave and
   impact your real system or personal files.

   You will still have to deal with side-effects caused by loss of
   control over your own computing, let alone the need to learn
   how to use that non-free tool;

b) somewhat better, although slow: use another computer (or get one from
   a rent) to do the work, and only do the work with that machine.

   The same case described in the second paragraph of (a) applies here;

c) better: do it with only free/libre software, and perhaps even teach
   or show the people involved how to make use of tools that support
   your workflow. For example Software Carpentry has awesome
   collaborative material on the basics of VCS using Git and of
   statistics wih R.

   If you don't have time to teach, make use of a tool that eases *them*
   participating in their terms.

   As an example, I'm writing my final course work using Org-mode, LaTeX
   and TikZ/PGF (this last one is for graphics), and whenever I want to
   send a snapshot for review to my advisor I do so through making a
   .pdf, but there is even more...

   The .pdf files don't actually track changes, so I must go into the
   extra step of doing the following:

   --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- #
   # Convert old .pdf work snapshot to text. Makes a .txt file of the same
   # name, minus ".pdf". Caution here because if you don't specify a name or
   # path to place the .txt file, `pdftotext' will put it in the same
   # directory where the original is, contrary to what most commands do in
   # GNU+Linux. In Trisquel 8.0 Flidas, `pdftotext' comes from the
   # "poppler-utils" package.

   pdftotext "Documents/Work_---_2018-05-01.pdf"

   # Same for current .pdf which will be sent.

   pdftotext "Work.pdf"

   # Use GNU `diff' to produce Unified diff for text-only content.  For us
   # who use GNU+Linux or GNU-with-Linux computers (GC) the diff files
   # commonly have .diff or .patch extensions, but we use .txt here so that
   # users of Windows computers (WC) can open those with ease in their
   # default plain text editor.

   diff -u "Work_---_2018-05-01.txt" "Work.txt" > "Work_diff.txt"

   # Among other unknown reasons, WCs make use of "\r\n" (carriage return
   # followed by line feed, commonly known as "CRLF" or "CR+LF") in the end
   # of each line to distinguish these plain text files from binary files.
   # WCs' default notepad will open a non-CRLF file but with all lines
   # joined, so we correct that using the `sed' line below. The side-effect
   # for us GC users is that some editing software might present two line
   # breaks.

   sed -i '/\r$/! { s/\($\)/\r\1/g }' "Work_diff.txt"
   --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

   Then send them both the .pdf and the diff file (the one which has
   .txt extension of course). And explain to them that the .txt is plain
   text that can be opened in plain text editor (usually called
   "Notepad" in Windows), and mention that it essentially shows the
   difference between old and new versions, and that:

   - Lines that begin with "+ " is new content;

   - ... "- " old content being removed;

   - ... "@@ -old_start,count_old +new_start,count_new @@" a line jump to
     given "old_start" line in the old file.

   With all that said, the advantages of .pdf files is that the advisors
   can highlight and annote/comment on these, save the changes and send
   it back to you (they can't change the structure or content of the
   document itself, but can at least give you hints).

With all the options I presented, there is still another issue which is
quite common at least in the college I study: the advisors don't
actually orient people that well here, so even if someone theoretically
decides to "suck it up and use non-free software anyways" this doesn't
stop the advisor from being too vague as to give comments such as "it's
not compliant with the institutional norms" (what exactly is not
compliant?! And how?!).

> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? Do you just
> nod and wave your freedom good bye?

Particularly I would make use of (b) or (c), but not (a).

I hope this has shed some light.


Respectfully, Adonay.

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Stefan Monnier]

> It is only when we have to collaborate directly that the issue
> arises.  I guess that it's a similar situation as you are having
> (programming? she does not care, I can do whatever I want; publication
> abstract? she wants a DOCX or DOC).

Collaborating on an article does require a fairly "deep" integration of
various people's tools, so some compromise often need to be made.

If she's used to using Word to edit documents, then it's likely going to
be difficult to convince her to use something else, at least during your
tenure as student.  What I do usually in those cases is the following:

- I refuse to install proprietary software, so in the worst case I'll edit
  a .docx document with LibreOffice (I don't see why she'd object to
  that under the imperfect compatibility between LibreOffice and Word
  gets in the way).
  [ BTW, If imperfect compatibility between LibreOffice and Word gets in the
  way, you might try and look for some other version of Word than hers,
  and find other incompatibilities (the various Word versions also
  suffer from imperfect compatibility), so as to show her that the issue
  is not just due to your use of Free Software.  ]

- You can try and get her to install the ODT plugin for Word so she can
  open ODT documents as well as .docx in her Word program.
  I often make the effort to only send ODT documents, even when it's
  a modification of a document that was sent to me in .docx format (on
  the premise that I shouldn't be the only one to bear the brunt of the
  format war).

- Depending on how many changes/annotations she contributes to the
  document, you might be able to keep your original in your favorite
  format (LaTeX, Org, you name it); convert it to ODT or .docx before
  sending it to her; and then integrating her changes/annotations by
  hand into your original document.

Using Git with ODT/.docx documents is about as pleasant as pulling teeth
in my experience, so there's no point trying to convince her to try it
out as long as she sticks to such WYSIWYG thingies.

Of course, the real problems start when she wants to use some *really*
poorly supported format like Apple's Pages.


        Stefan

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Gene]

On Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 8:29:06 PM UTC-4, ed...@openmail.cc wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with my 
> advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. 

That you see it or characerize it this way might be part of your problem.
I've experienced similar problems when employed as a software and firmware engineer when The Pointy Haired Boss dictated which computer language to use.
Or was that to submit source code in?

This is no moot point ... for me THEN or YOU NOW.

Your perviser proclivities to use free software may be masked by whatever superficial formating of whatever file you provide to her as the fruits of your labor.
It's none of her effin' busyness how many intermediate steps occurred between your initial efforts and what her superficial highness SEES as the end results of your scholarly ever so academic efforts ... is it?

Open Office can read and write many Monopoly$oft Office formats.
So why not regard it as a laundering `compatibility' black box to which you can insert `content' generated by a wife variety of free software apps of your choosing?

That you're using org-mode means you have access to the lisp engine at the heart of emacs and can thus offload the steps used to automate the generation of the superficial files you hand over to your `advisor' -- indentured servant MASTER -- NOW ... as you're rehearsing the practice for re-use if/when you get out into the Real World where EVERY Pointer Haired Boss can demand this, and micro-manage that. 

That you even mention the perverse proclivity to use free software puts you at risk for `special treatment'.
Do you have any idea how many in positions of authority to constrain your freedom of choise OWN Monopoly$oft stock and have no qualms about misusing their positions of authority to specify proprietary products which benifit them as stock holders?!

Don't EVEN go there!

Just learn how to generate what they want to SEE and learn how to back progate changes you make to the bogus `official' documents as red-lined by THEM ... we know WHO they ARE.

> I am obviously not in position to refuse, ...

And indentured servant my any other name ...

> ... but she dislikes to have discussions about it. 

Rookie!  Keep your perversions to yourself.
Stop scaring the women and children needlessly.


>She pays a stipend to me every month, and my tuition is waved.

 
> Is anyone here aware of a place ...

Ummn ... in your HEAD and computationally within your computer equipment.

> where they do computational human biomechanics, mechanics, 
> materials or finite elements where I could 
> interact with free software? 

Think about it.
The more factors you have ANDed together the harder it is going to be to find the Goldly Locks `just right' solution you're looking for.
What makes emacs so wonderful is not org-mode, it's the elisp which props org-mode up.
One can load packages to facilitate the activities one exploits towards generating the eye wash The Boss needs to SEE to keep one's stipend flowing.
One can cobble together a specialized configuration to facilitate the special blend of functionality one requires.

> (having github, LaTeX, Python, etc.; avoid 
> Micro$oft products, Matlab, Mathematica, etc.). 

Let's suppose you know enough Latin to get you by in academia

U = No
topia = place



> Is there no place where 
> one can simply use free software on a daily basis?

Utopia == No Place
Pinch yourself; you're dreaming.

> It seems from her comments that I am, otherwise, a good researcher. 

Otherwise?
Funny stuff.
Those with the `right stuff' to BE a good researcher naturally resonate with the ethos underpinning free software -- the empirical method can be used to tweak the source code on an as-needed basis as with any other lab equipment.


> She is a nice person, but I fear that this may become an issue in the future 
> for me (whether with her or other people).

Right.  As I mentioned earlier, get used to this.
Get used to translating from YOUR ipsative inner world -- extended by use of free software -- into something or other which results in your SELF either `voluntarily-prostrating or involuntarily being-prostrated onto THEIR Procrustean Beds.

Please think of free software a belonging on YOUR side of the fence.
It's all weird and wonderful when we find those statistically deviant to share in our fetish.
But you're heading for disappointment and frustration hoping or expecting IT to displace Pop Culture, Business Culture, Mainstream Culture.

> As a student or junior faculty, how do you go about this? 
> Do you just nod and wave your freedom good bye?

You are FREE to think what you want and believe what you want.
Though when you EXPRESS as per `freedom of speech/expression' others have the same freedoms of expression to PUSH BACK, respond accordingly, etc.
Thus my suggestion to keep it to yourself and your statistically deviant friends.

As long as you can send and receive files in the formats of THEIR WORLD they have no grounds for `special treatment'; however IF YOU seek `special treatment' in the form of THEM accommodating YOUR deviant practices it's YOU are throwing the rock through the metaphorical hornet's nest.


> Thank you! (I will post this in other fora as well; don't let that to 
> discourage you from answering, please).

I hope my two cents had at least 1 cent of value for you.

Cheers!

Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 04:27:12PM -0700, Gene wrote:

[...]

> U = No
> topia = place

<nitpick> that's Greek, afaik </nitpick>

;-)

- -- t
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/aMAniYHZlhJc7W3sPkHJgcOfqtADngP
=5xiz
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-18, at 21:57, Adonay Felipe Nogueira <adfeno@hyperbola.info> wrote:

> c) better: do it with only free/libre software, and perhaps even teach
>    or show the people involved how to make use of tools that support
>    your workflow. For example Software Carpentry has awesome
>    collaborative material on the basics of VCS using Git and of
>    statistics wih R.
>
>    If you don't have time to teach, make use of a tool that eases *them*
>    participating in their terms.
>
>    As an example, I'm writing my final course work using Org-mode, LaTeX
>    and TikZ/PGF (this last one is for graphics), and whenever I want to
>    send a snapshot for review to my advisor I do so through making a
>    .pdf, but there is even more...
>
>    The .pdf files don't actually track changes, so I must go into the
>    extra step of doing the following:

Or use latexdiff (in case of LaTeX).

Hth,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: [O] General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-18, at 15:50, hymie! <hymie@lactose.homelinux.net> wrote:

> For example, good luck finding free software that will do your taxes.

I, for that matter, do not use any proprietary software to do my taxes.
(And BTW, I'm not religiously following the "only use free software"
mantra, in fact, I feel some distance to the FSF ideals.)

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-18, at 15:50, hymie! <hymie@lactose.homelinux.net> wrote:

> For example, good luck finding free software that will do your taxes.

I, for that matter, do not use any proprietary software to do my taxes.
(And BTW, I'm not religiously following the "only use free software"
mantra, in fact, I feel some distance to the FSF ideals.)

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[James K. Lowden]

On Fri, 18 May 2018 00:28:22 +0000
edgar@openmail.cc wrote:

> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with
> my advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am
> obviously not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have
> discussions about it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my
> tuition is waved.

Question #1: How important is your strong inclination, measured in
dollars?  Because we all have to go along to get along, to some extent.

Every place I've ever worked used at least some proprietary software.
Every place had the need to exchange modifiable files.  The desire to
move from Windows to, say, Qt was nil.  

The need to share information trumps concerns about software licensing
every time.  The need to keep using what you know trumps touted
features of what you'd have to learn.  If you don't believe me, ask
someone whose department switched to Git from Subversion.  

Your advisor is only the tip of the iceberg.  Really, she's a messenger
from the real world, a place where you'll have to learn to use software
you don't like, and deal with many other contraints and impositions on
your freedom to get the job done.  All organizations have rules, after
all, by definition.  

If you're trying to defend your ideals, it might help to remember you
can't, because everything is connected to everything else.  

During the Vietnam war, it wasn't uncommon for someone to declare their
opposition to the war meant they refused to work for a defense
contractor.  OK.  Banking, then?  But banks finance defense
contractors.  McDonalds?  They feed defense contractor employees.
Academia?  You're training new defense contractors.  No matter how you
earn your bread, your employer and your earnings eventually feed the
same maw.  

If you're just trying to pamper your fingers, it might help to remember
you can.  To the extent others are unaffected, you'll usually be free
to choose what software to use.  That will be more true in technical
and scientific areas, and less true in business and administrative
ones.  

How much independence you have depends on how expert you are.  If you
need guidance in how to accomplish a task, any task, you can't expect
the person helping you to *also* learn your software.  Usually help
comes in the form of "using X do Y", and if you don't have X, you have
to figure out what X(Y) is.  If you know the problem domain and your
software very well, the route to X(Y) is shorter than if you don't.  

One last point that's often underappreciated: if you use whatever
software you're asked/expected to use, then if you have problems or
delays -- as you certainly will -- you'll have a sympathetic ear.  If
you insist on doing it your own way, others will blame every problem or
delay, fairly or not, on your choice of software.  Before you buck the
system, it pays to get buy-in or to be very, very sure you'll come out
ahead.  

--jkl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Samuel Wales]

perhaps we can start thinking about improving registration between formats?

if you export org [you posted to org mailng list] to a foreign format,
you want your collaborator to be able to edit, save, send back without
raising a sweat.

now you have to integrate the changes.  you want to do this without annoyance.

suppose you export comments in the foreign format that contain the
equivalent of persistent markers.  you might or might not be willing
to put org id or custom id on every heading, but there might be
workarounds that are not so intrusive.  maybe your source can contain
comments with markers.  dunno.

if your exported document is a subtree within a huge org file that you
edit all the time, registration allows your software to identify that
subtree, so you're not trying to change anything outside that subtree.
that alone is a win.

but maybe we can do more.  the markers can register sections or even
paragraphs if you're doing intensive collaboration.  the tricky part
might be getting standard tools to understand that the mapping of
markers takes precedence over everything else.

details of this handwavey and possibly impossible brainstorm are left
as an exercise for the reader.

Exporting ODT to Org [was Re: General advice beyond Org]

[edgar]

On 2018-05-20 01:24, Samuel Wales wrote:
> perhaps we can start thinking about improving registration between 
> formats?

I don't really know what this means.

> if you export org [you posted to org mailng list] to a foreign format,
> you want your collaborator to be able to edit, save, send back without
> raising a sweat.

Not really, although it would be nice--and possibly titanic to do.

> now you have to integrate the changes.  you want to do this without 
> annoyance.
> 
> suppose you export comments in the foreign format that contain the
> equivalent of persistent markers.  you might or might not be willing
> to put org id or custom id on every heading, but there might be
> workarounds that are not so intrusive.  maybe your source can contain
> comments with markers.  dunno.

Every great project had to start somewhere (this sounds like that). 
However, if I am going to devote time to such a gigantic task, I would 
rather spend it trying to convert others to free software rather than 
doing favours to a closed format. I am not saying that it wouldn't be 
nice to have it.

> if your exported document is a subtree within a huge org file that you
> edit all the time, registration allows your software to identify that
> subtree, so you're not trying to change anything outside that subtree.
> that alone is a win.

This sounds like a project for people in LibreOffice or Pandoc. I think 
I will contact them to see if they are interested.

> 
> but maybe we can do more.  the markers can register sections or even
> paragraphs if you're doing intensive collaboration.  the tricky part
> might be getting standard tools to understand that the mapping of
> markers takes precedence over everything else.

Yes, big project.

> 
> details of this handwavey and possibly impossible brainstorm are left
> as an exercise for the reader.

LooooL! you remind me of books with notes such as "after deriving the 
equation one arrives to the following expression" :P !

Thank you.

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 06:24:49PM -0700, Samuel Wales wrote:
> perhaps we can start thinking about improving registration between formats?

This resonates with some vague ideas that keep haunting some
dark corners of my mind:

it isn't generally possible to convert "Word" [1] into Org. But what
if that "Word" is just a slight modification of something which has
been transformed from an Org document we know?

Of course, augmenting that with "pockets" where to stash meta-information
which might get lost on round-trip would be even more interesting. Perhaps
those pockets are external, tied to some (possibly change-resistant) hash
made of enough context.

Did I say dark corners?

Cheers

[1] "Word" as a placeholder for some random, rather unfriendly document
   format.
- -- t
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 18:31:55 -0400
> From: "James K. Lowden" <jklowden@speakeasy.net>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <20180519183155.caea7e3c88b046e85a82e888@speakeasy.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> On Fri, 18 May 2018 00:28:22 +0000
> edgar@openmail.cc wrote:
> 
>> _I_ need help. I am in graduate school, and I keep having issues with
>> my advisor for my strong inclination to use free software. I am
>> obviously not in position to refuse, but she dislikes to have
>> discussions about it. She pays a stipend to me every month, and my
>> tuition is waved.
> 
> Question #1: How important is your strong inclination, measured in
> dollars?  Because we all have to go along to get along, to some extent.

American, Canadian, Australian... dollars? :D . I don't like to measure 
myself in currency. It is as if turning into a product. I guess that you 
mean how much I am willing to give up for my inclination, which is a 
good question.

> Every place I've ever worked used at least some proprietary software.
> Every place had the need to exchange modifiable files.  The desire to
> move from Windows to, say, Qt was nil.

This reminds me of the comment from Gene:

> Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 16:27:12 -0700 (PDT)
>> Do you have any idea how many in positions of authority to constrain
>> your freedom of choise OWN Monopoly$oft stock and have no qualms about
>> misusing their positions of authority to specify proprietary products
>> which benifit them as stock holders?!
>> 
>> Don't EVEN go there!

But it is good to know that I will face this.

> The need to share information trumps concerns about software licensing
> every time.  The need to keep using what you know trumps touted
> features of what you'd have to learn.  If you don't believe me, ask
> someone whose department switched to Git from Subversion.

Golly! I still remember all the time that I had to devote to partially 
use Emacs correctly, having used many others in the past! I would not go 
back!

> Your advisor is only the tip of the iceberg.  Really, she's a messenger
> from the real world, a place where you'll have to learn to use software
> you don't like, and deal with many other contraints and impositions on
> your freedom to get the job done.  All organizations have rules, after
> all, by definition.

> If you're trying to defend your ideals, it might help to remember you
> can't, because everything is connected to everything else.

The first part of this statement is very daunting, depressing and grim.

> During the Vietnam war, it wasn't uncommon for someone to declare their
> opposition to the war meant they refused to work for a defense
> contractor.  OK.  Banking, then?  But banks finance defense
> contractors.  McDonalds?  They feed defense contractor employees.
> Academia?  You're training new defense contractors.  No matter how you
> earn your bread, your employer and your earnings eventually feed the
> same maw.

Oh! war! thou creator of all!

> If you're just trying to pamper your fingers, it might help to remember
> you can.  To the extent others are unaffected, you'll usually be free
> to choose what software to use.  That will be more true in technical
> and scientific areas, and less true in business and administrative
> ones.

I don't know what "pamper your fingers" mean, but I think that the 
message is the comparison between technical and scientific v.s. business 
and administrative.

> How much independence you have depends on how expert you are.  If you
> need guidance in how to accomplish a task, any task, you can't expect
> the person helping you to *also* learn your software.  Usually help
> comes in the form of "using X do Y", and if you don't have X, you have
> to figure out what X(Y) is.  If you know the problem domain and your
> software very well, the route to X(Y) is shorter than if you don't.

May be that is why it is easier in academia? where answers are not 
completely clear?

> One last point that's often underappreciated: if you use whatever
> software you're asked/expected to use, then if you have problems or
> delays -- as you certainly will -- you'll have a sympathetic ear.  If
> you insist on doing it your own way, others will blame every problem or
> delay, fairly or not, on your choice of software.  Before you buck the
> system, it pays to get buy-in or to be very, very sure you'll come out
> ahead.
> 

Thanks for the heads up!

> --jkl

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-20, at 21:29, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:

>> Question #1: How important is your strong inclination, measured in
>> dollars?  Because we all have to go along to get along, to some extent.
>
> American, Canadian, Australian... dollars? :D . I don't like to
> measure myself in currency. It is as if turning into
> a product. I guess that you mean how much I am willing to give up for
> my inclination, which is a good question.

Good point about not measuring everything in money.

>> If you're trying to defend your ideals, it might help to remember you
>> can't, because everything is connected to everything else.
>
> The first part of this statement is very daunting, depressing and grim.

And very untrue.

It helps to develop a rational attitude to morality: you do not have
influence on everything, not even all the results of your actions, and
hence you do not bear responsibility for what you don't influence.  (Of
course, that doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for what you
_do_ influence.)

For instance, you go to the bakery, buy the bread and pay the baker the
money.  He then takes the money and goes to buy a gun to kill his wife.
Are you responsible?  I don't think so (at least under normal
circumstances).

(BTW, by "rational attitude to morality" I mean "attitude to morality
which takes morality seriously, and at the same time takes seriously the
_reality_, i.e., not some nice-looking theory which does not work in
practice, nor any way to just say that morality doesn't matter.  IOW,
"rational attitude to morality" is just "the Catholic attitude to
morality".)

>> During the Vietnam war, it wasn't uncommon for someone to declare their
>> opposition to the war meant they refused to work for a defense
>> contractor.  OK.  Banking, then?  But banks finance defense
>> contractors.  McDonalds?  They feed defense contractor employees.
>> Academia?  You're training new defense contractors.  No matter how you
>> earn your bread, your employer and your earnings eventually feed the
>> same maw.
>
> Oh! war! thou creator of all!

Again, too simplistic and not true.

>> If you're just trying to pamper your fingers, it might help to remember
>> you can.  To the extent others are unaffected, you'll usually be free
>> to choose what software to use.  That will be more true in technical
>> and scientific areas, and less true in business and administrative
>> ones.
>
> I don't know what "pamper your fingers" mean, but I think that the
> message is the comparison between technical and scientific
> v.s. business and administrative.

FWIW, I work in a small software house which mostly uses open-source
software (which is not the same as free software, but has a big
intersection with it).  We use Node.js, Vagrant, Ansible, PostgreSQL...
And our boss encourages us to "give back" to the larger community by bug
reports, pull requests and open-sourcing small utilities we write.

>> One last point that's often underappreciated: if you use whatever
>> software you're asked/expected to use, then if you have problems or
>> delays -- as you certainly will -- you'll have a sympathetic ear.  If
>> you insist on doing it your own way, others will blame every problem or
>> delay, fairly or not, on your choice of software. [...]

*Very true*.  We have one person using MacOS.  Every time there's some
problem, someone says "It's because it's Apple."  Yes, it's a joke, but
it's symptomatic.  We also run a small, jocular version of "editor war"
between Emacs (me) and Sublime Text (most of the other developers).

Just my 2 cents.

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[James K. Lowden]

On Mon, 21 May 2018 05:39:07 +0200
Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

> For instance, you go to the bakery, buy the bread and pay the baker
> the money.  He then takes the money and goes to buy a gun to kill his
> wife. Are you responsible?  I don't think so (at least under normal
> circumstances).

I'd like to respond, even though we're wandering off topic from
the OP's OT message.  

No, you're not responsible.  Neither could you have prevented the
murder by not patronizing the baker.  

As I see it, we can individually do very little virtuous in the
marketplace. You can recycle, buy organic, drive a hybrid, whatever.
Your effect, positive or negative, is miniscule, taken alone. Likewise
deciding not to work in a Windows shop on principle.  

Maximizing your knowledge and capacity is much more rewarding and, I'd
argue, socially important.  

Your job is rewarding to the extent it requires you to work at the edge
of your capacity, to learn and innovate.  Human beings love to do what
they're good at, whether it's pitching a baseball or devising a data
structure.  As someone not frustrated/stunted by the job, you have
more energy and confidence to pay attention to nonwork, and to apply
what you learn at work to the larger society.  

If your goal is to widen the aegis of free software, you can to more to
further it by maximizing your capacity than by boycotting employers.
Then, one day -- when you're in charge of a lab, say, or investing a
small fortune -- you can make some actual difference.  If that
opportunity never comes to pass, at least you've pursued interesting
work, and enriched your life and others' around you in the process.  

--jkl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Bob Newell]

It's tempting to fall back on the clichéed idea that one goes from
idealism to cynicism as one ages. But one does acquire some practical
knowledge, and learning when to compromise and when not to compromise
is one example.

As I said far above in this thread and a few others have echoed, we
need to pick our battles. Some battles aren't worth it, while others
are mandatory. And that line varies as much by individual as it does
by battle domain.

I mentioned that I worked in one environment that was completely
locked down with absolutely zero deviation permitted. That made work
very much more difficult, especially as it was just about pure
Microsoft. But the job was good; it was worth doing, it paid well
enough, it was challenging, and it wasn't something I would quit just
so I could go somewhere else that embraced FOSS. That was more of a
business decision than a moral one; I'm not RMS and while FOSS is
important to me, it's not a hill to die on. Your own mileage may vary,
and that's fine.

If, on the other hand, the job required me to go out and kill all
people of a certain race or religion, it would be an entirely
different matter and no amount of pay or benefits would get me to do
that. It's a deliberately ridiculous example made to illustrate the
point that the "line" lies somewhere in-between. For most people it
will be somewhere above pure idealism and somewhere below stark
cynicism.

Real life is filled with compromises; indeed, society wouldn't get on
without some of them. So we have to make choices, and we need to make
them with our eyes open.

Wow, we are SO off topic!

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-21, at 20:07, Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> wrote:

> It's tempting to fall back on the clichéed idea that one goes from
> idealism to cynicism as one ages. But one does acquire some practical

No, one goes (or should go at least) from the naive idealism to the
reasonable idealism.

Also, maybe (just maybe) one goes from thinking about one's ideals in
the abstract way to gradually understanding that a lot of ideals are
about other people.

> knowledge, and learning when to compromise and when not to compromise
> is one example.

Yes.

> As I said far above in this thread and a few others have echoed, we
> need to pick our battles. Some battles aren't worth it, while others
> are mandatory. And that line varies as much by individual as it does
> by battle domain.

OTOH, there are also battles that are not "worth it" in purely pragmatic
sense, and they are indeed worth fighting in moral sense.  "There are
some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the
end may be dark", as Aragorn once put it.

> I mentioned that I worked in one environment that was completely
> locked down with absolutely zero deviation permitted. That made work
> very much more difficult, especially as it was just about pure
> Microsoft. But the job was good; it was worth doing, it paid well
> enough, it was challenging, and it wasn't something I would quit just
> so I could go somewhere else that embraced FOSS. That was more of a
> business decision than a moral one; I'm not RMS and while FOSS is
> important to me, it's not a hill to die on. Your own mileage may vary,
> and that's fine.
>
> If, on the other hand, the job required me to go out and kill all
> people of a certain race or religion, it would be an entirely
> different matter and no amount of pay or benefits would get me to do
> that. It's a deliberately ridiculous example made to illustrate the
> point that the "line" lies somewhere in-between. For most people it
> will be somewhere above pure idealism and somewhere below stark
> cynicism.

Ah, the joys of Darboux-style arguments! ;-)

But you're right.  Of course, in the usual case we are somewhere
in-between, and sometimes it is quite hard to decide what one should
do.

> Wow, we are SO off topic!

Are we?  I don't think so.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Eric Abrahamsen]

edgar@openmail.cc writes:

>> Message: 3
>> Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 16:44:39 -1000
>> From: Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>
>> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>> Subject: Re: [O] General advice beyond Org
>> 	
>
>> If your evaluation (and you need to do a careful evaluation of the
>> merits and demerits of both your approach and her approach) is that
>> it's better to go with what your adviser asks, then you should do so.
>> No, I wouldn't like it either. But I don't think (unlike RMS, perhaps)
>> that there are show-stopping moral or ethical issues here.
>>
>> If your evaluation truly tells you that your way is best, then you
>> need to come up with a plan of action, with alternatives. I'd suggest
>> that a good enough evaluation could possibly sway your adviser.
>>
>> Best of luck to you.
>>
>
> Thank you, Bob (I'm sorry for not knowing any Hawaiian other than
> aloha). I truly believe that my way is best (she likes track changes,
> but I am almost sure that has never tried Git, subversion, mercurial
> or anything like that). On the other hand, I really think that she is
> still not going to like it if I try to persuade her (I think that
> there was a previous student trying to use LaTeX, for instance, and
> she really dislikes it for some reason; I don't really know).

For anyone who's paying attention to US politics (I hope it's not
ruining your day), the lesson I think we're learning here is that
positions that are held for emotional reasons only get stronger the more
you attack them.

Knowing nothing more about your adviser than what you've written in this
thread, it sounds like it might be an emotional issue for her (as it may
be for you, and certainly is for many of us here!). Meaning, she's
likely to respond to any perceived "attack" by doubling down.

So it might be time to try out the Daoist playbook and "do without
doing". That's not helpful advice without more specifics, but my
understanding of the approach is that you create the conditions
conducive to the result you want, rather than forcing the result itself.
So that might mean providing a useful FOSS-based service to your fellow
students, or helping people understand your workflow in a non-pressuring
way, or... otherwise convincing people that it was their idea to begin
with.

Just an idea!

Eric

Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:10:06PM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:

[...]

> For anyone who's paying attention to US politics (I hope it's not
> ruining your day) [...]

There are so many ways to get one's day ruined... ;-)

> positions that are held for emotional reasons only get stronger the more
> you attack them.
> 
> Knowing nothing more about your adviser than what you've written in this
> thread, it sounds like it might be an emotional issue for her (as it may
> be for you, and certainly is for many of us here!). Meaning, she's
> likely to respond to any perceived "attack" by doubling down.

<old guy's rant>

I read that between your lines, but I think it's worth being stressed:
mainstream discourse has for a long time painted "emotional" (as
opposed to "rational") in a negative light. Since we perceive better
those emotions that are not ours, we tend to misuse that to detract
our opponents ("they are irrational") -- this verges on intellectual
dishonesty, and has IMO helped to reach the situation we have these
days. It's an echo of the reaction to the Age of Enlightenment that
Romanticism was.

The sensible (heh :) way out, IMO, is to accept that the "other" has
as much right to her emotions as we have, and that our position only
*seems* more rational to us, because we can't see our emotions as
well as we can see the "other's". Or something.

That doesn't mean to give up on one's position, nor to give up on
convincing the "other" -- but it includes (and that's the painful
part :-) accepting the possibility to be convinced by the "other".

</old guy's rant>

> So it might be time to try out the Daoist playbook and "do without
> doing".

Very much this :-)

>        That's not helpful advice without more specifics, but my
> understanding of the approach is that you create the conditions
> conducive to the result you want, rather than forcing the result itself.
> So that might mean providing a useful FOSS-based service to your fellow
> students, or helping people understand your workflow in a non-pressuring
> way, or... otherwise convincing people that it was their idea to begin
> with.

Good idea. I'll steal it :-)

Cheers & thanks
- -- tomás
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Bob Newell]

On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 9:10 PM,  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

> That doesn't mean to give up on one's position, nor to give up on
> convincing the "other" -- but it includes (and that's the painful
> part :-) accepting the possibility to be convinced by the "other".

And in fact there is another possibility: that you may /both/ be right
in your own individual ways; there may in fact not be a single
objective "right" way. Much as it pains me to say a Microsoft user
could be right--- it may be the best way for some people and some
tasks.

Now, we get into the question of someone /imposing/ their "right"
answer on someone else who has a different "right" answer ... and all
the questions in the long thread above return.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

Sent via Linux Mint 17.

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Eric Abrahamsen]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:10:06PM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> For anyone who's paying attention to US politics (I hope it's not
>> ruining your day) [...]
>
> There are so many ways to get one's day ruined... ;-)
>
>> positions that are held for emotional reasons only get stronger the more
>> you attack them.
>>
>> Knowing nothing more about your adviser than what you've written in this
>> thread, it sounds like it might be an emotional issue for her (as it may
>> be for you, and certainly is for many of us here!). Meaning, she's
>> likely to respond to any perceived "attack" by doubling down.
>
> <old guy's rant>
>
> I read that between your lines, but I think it's worth being stressed:
> mainstream discourse has for a long time painted "emotional" (as
> opposed to "rational") in a negative light. Since we perceive better
> those emotions that are not ours, we tend to misuse that to detract
> our opponents ("they are irrational") -- this verges on intellectual
> dishonesty, and has IMO helped to reach the situation we have these
> days. It's an echo of the reaction to the Age of Enlightenment that
> Romanticism was.
>
> The sensible (heh :) way out, IMO, is to accept that the "other" has
> as much right to her emotions as we have, and that our position only
> *seems* more rational to us, because we can't see our emotions as
> well as we can see the "other's". Or something.
>
> That doesn't mean to give up on one's position, nor to give up on
> convincing the "other" -- but it includes (and that's the painful
> part :-) accepting the possibility to be convinced by the "other".
>
> </old guy's rant>

I certainly didn't mean to dump on "emotional"! I think most of us are
working from emotional impulses most of the time; I think that's normal.

Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 11:05:17AM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:10:06PM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:

[...]

> I certainly didn't mean to dump on "emotional"! I think most of us are
> working from emotional impulses most of the time; I think that's normal.

Nor I read you so. It's just that I sometimes fear we're too timid on
that :)

Cheers
- -- t
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 13:10:06 -0700
> From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <87vabgg481.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> edgar@openmail.cc writes:
> 
> For anyone who's paying attention to US politics (I hope it's not
> ruining your day), the lesson I think we're learning here is that
> positions that are held for emotional reasons only get stronger the 
> more
> you attack them.

The lessons that I learned were:
- that it is very seldom to find a place to work with free software
- that there are people who don't give a rat's ass about freedom.
- that there are people who are committed to freedom
- that many people expect me to give away my and future generations 
rights
- that this is a harder decision than I expected

I disagree on politics being exclusively related to "emotional reasons", 
but I don't want to diverge.

> 
> Knowing nothing more about your adviser than what you've written in 
> this
> thread, it sounds like it might be an emotional issue for her (as it 
> may
> be for you, and certainly is for many of us here!). Meaning, she's
> likely to respond to any perceived "attack" by doubling down.

If the previous point of not fighting emotional arguments is valid, then 
may be being rational about it may help. We are talking about people's 
freedom. Nothing can be more humanly irrational and reasonable at the 
same time than that. My 2 cents.

> So it might be time to try out the Daoist playbook and "do without
> doing". That's not helpful advice without more specifics, but my
> understanding of the approach is that you create the conditions
> conducive to the result you want, rather than forcing the result 
> itself.
> So that might mean providing a useful FOSS-based service to your fellow
> students, or helping people understand your workflow in a 
> non-pressuring
> way, or... otherwise convincing people that it was their idea to begin
> with.

Fighting, indeed, has shown to _always_ create more issues than it's 
supposed to resolve. Being smart about it: yes.

> 
> Just an idea!
> 
> Eric

Thank you, Eric :)

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 09:10:50 +0200
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <20180522071050.GA26414@tuxteam.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; x-action=pgp-signed
> 
> There are so many ways to get one's day ruined... ;-)

:P

> That doesn't mean to give up on one's position, nor to give up on
> convincing the "other" -- but it includes (and that's the painful
> part :-) accepting the possibility to be convinced by the "other".

Empathy and objectivity may be good tools for this.

> 
> </old guy's rant>

One of the best that I've seen.

> Good idea. I'll steal it :-)

I'll improve it! :P :D

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 05:39:07 +0200
> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
> To: edgar@openmail.cc
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <87zi0tvfs4.fsf@mbork.pl>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> 
> And very untrue.

THANKS!

> It helps to develop a rational attitude to morality: you do not have
> influence on everything, not even all the results of your actions, and
> hence you do not bear responsibility for what you don't influence.  (Of
> course, that doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for what 
> you
> _do_ influence.)

Do you mean pragmatic or short-sighted by rational? I don't think that 
philosophers are necessarily irrational :) (to name a few).

> For instance, you go to the bakery, buy the bread and pay the baker the
> money.  He then takes the money and goes to buy a gun to kill his wife.
> Are you responsible?  I don't think so (at least under normal
> circumstances).

Ah, but you showed a queen of diamonds to the baker, who was conditioned 
to kill as soon as he saw that! :P LoL. Agree.

> (BTW, by "rational attitude to morality" I mean "attitude to morality
> which takes morality seriously, and at the same time takes seriously 
> the
> _reality_, i.e., not some nice-looking theory which does not work in
> practice, nor any way to just say that morality doesn't matter.  IOW,
> "rational attitude to morality" is just "the Catholic attitude to
> morality".)

Yes. I think that this is closer to what I wanted to say earlier.

> Again, too simplistic and not true.

> FWIW, I work in a small software house which mostly uses open-source
> software (which is not the same as free software, but has a big
> intersection with it).  We use Node.js, Vagrant, Ansible, PostgreSQL...
> And our boss encourages us to "give back" to the larger community by 
> bug
> reports, pull requests and open-sourcing small utilities we write.

I think that it's worth a lot! Shut! if half the companies did that...

> *Very true*.  We have one person using MacOS.  Every time there's some
> problem, someone says "It's because it's Apple."  Yes, it's a joke, but
> it's symptomatic.  We also run a small, jocular version of "editor war"
> between Emacs (me) and Sublime Text (most of the other developers).
> 

I like these type of running gags myself :) .

> Just my 2 cents.

Can I pay back? :)

> 
> --
> Marcin Borkowski
> http://mbork.pl

Thanks Marcin!

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

For posterity: I have answered to the messages on this thread elsewhere. 
Thanks!

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 06:58:08 -1000
> From: Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID:
> 	<CADoYgq9UVOj4iLZCo9tfj+wnfpAQn2LScFnh+bV4neWtofzD4w@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 9:10 PM,  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> 
>> That doesn't mean to give up on one's position, nor to give up on
>> convincing the "other" -- but it includes (and that's the painful
>> part :-) accepting the possibility to be convinced by the "other".
> 
> And in fact there is another possibility: that you may /both/ be right
> in your own individual ways; there may in fact not be a single
> objective "right" way. Much as it pains me to say a Microsoft user
> could be right--- it may be the best way for some people and some
> tasks.

I have one:
    "Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, 
“The knowledge you want is a secret—learning is forbidden!” Proprietary 
software is the enemy of the spirit of education, so it should not be 
tolerated in a school, except as an object for reverse engineering." 
[https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.en.html]

> Now, we get into the question of someone /imposing/ their "right"
> answer on someone else who has a different "right" answer ... and all
> the questions in the long thread above return.

Oh! The nice practice of achieving freedom by imposition! :)

> 
> --
> Bob Newell
> Honolulu, Hawai`i

Thanks, Bob. Aloha again!

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 11:05:17 -0700
> From: Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <877envftwi.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> 
> I certainly didn't mean to dump on "emotional"! I think most of us are
> working from emotional impulses most of the time; I think that's 
> normal.

Tell us the truth! You are a cold-blooded and insensitive hot-dog, we 
know! ;) ... (if you are asking yourself why hot-dog, does it really 
matter? mmm, hungry!)

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 21:15:32 +0200
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> Message-ID: <20180522191532.GA13378@tuxteam.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; x-action=pgp-signed
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 11:05:17AM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>> 
>> > On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:10:06PM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> I certainly didn't mean to dump on "emotional"! I think most of us are
>> working from emotional impulses most of the time; I think that's 
>> normal.
> 
> Nor I read you so. It's just that I sometimes fear we're too timid on
> that :)

Need say more?

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Stefan Monnier]

> We are talking about people's freedom.

"Freedom" is a vague concept, applied in very subjective ways.

It's not like you can increase freedom in some respect without reducing
it elsewhere.  So "rational" doesn't have much to do with it.


        Stefan

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-23, at 06:04, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:

>> It helps to develop a rational attitude to morality: you do not have
>> influence on everything, not even all the results of your actions, and
>> hence you do not bear responsibility for what you don't influence.  (Of
>> course, that doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for what
>> you
>> _do_ influence.)
>
> Do you mean pragmatic or short-sighted by rational? I don't think that
> philosophers are necessarily irrational :) (to name a few).

I mean neither.  By "rational" I mean "guided by reason".

>> For instance, you go to the bakery, buy the bread and pay the baker the
>> money.  He then takes the money and goes to buy a gun to kill his wife.
>> Are you responsible?  I don't think so (at least under normal
>> circumstances).
>
> Ah, but you showed a queen of diamonds to the baker, who was
> conditioned to kill as soon as he saw that! :P LoL. Agree.

;-)

>> (BTW, by "rational attitude to morality" I mean "attitude to morality
>> which takes morality seriously, and at the same time takes seriously
>> the
>> _reality_, i.e., not some nice-looking theory which does not work in
>> practice, nor any way to just say that morality doesn't matter.  IOW,
>> "rational attitude to morality" is just "the Catholic attitude to
>> morality".)
>
> Yes. I think that this is closer to what I wanted to say earlier.
>
>> Again, too simplistic and not true.
>
>> FWIW, I work in a small software house which mostly uses open-source
>> software (which is not the same as free software, but has a big
>> intersection with it).  We use Node.js, Vagrant, Ansible, PostgreSQL...
>> And our boss encourages us to "give back" to the larger community by
>> bug
>> reports, pull requests and open-sourcing small utilities we write.
>
> I think that it's worth a lot! Shut! if half the companies did that...

Yes.

Maybe we tend to forget what a "commercial company" is.  On the one
hand, it is (by definition) a means to make money.  If it doesn't make
money, it does not fulfil its primary purpose, and this means its
broken, and should be either fixed or abandoned.  On the other hand, it
should not be just the instrument of greediness of the owner(s).  They
in turn are people, and their primary purpose is completely different.

If you identify yourself too much with any kind of commercial endeavor,
it is a sign of very serious problems.

>> *Very true*.  We have one person using MacOS.  Every time there's some
>> problem, someone says "It's because it's Apple."  Yes, it's a joke, but
>> it's symptomatic.  We also run a small, jocular version of "editor war"
>> between Emacs (me) and Sublime Text (most of the other developers).
>
> I like these type of running gags myself :) .

:-)

I taught Emacs to a friend, whom I sometimes show cool tricks.  Once
I showed him multiple cursors, which required some choreography from my
fingers, but I thought it was quite impressive.  Then he nodded and
asked "I'm wondering what were you doing with your feet."

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-05-23, at 21:19, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

>> We are talking about people's freedom.
>
> "Freedom" is a vague concept, applied in very subjective ways.

On the contrary, I think that freedom is a very clear and objective
concept.  What is sometimes vague is how we should apply the clear
concept to a particular situation.

> It's not like you can increase freedom in some respect without reducing
> it elsewhere.  So "rational" doesn't have much to do with it.

I think the two issues are orthogonal.  "Rationality" is about using the
reason.  What else should you use to decide what is the ethical thing to
do?  Emotions are sometimes right and sometimes misleading.

Also, I'm not sure whether increasing freedom in one thing must imply
reducing it in another one.

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

On 2018-05-26 04:01, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
> On 2018-05-23, at 06:04, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:
> 
>>> It helps to develop a rational attitude to morality: you do not have
>>> influence on everything, not even all the results of your actions, 
>>> and
>>> hence you do not bear responsibility for what you don't influence.  
>>> (Of
>>> course, that doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for what
>>> you
>>> _do_ influence.)
>> 
>> Do you mean pragmatic or short-sighted by rational? I don't think that
>> philosophers are necessarily irrational :) (to name a few).
> 
> I mean neither.  By "rational" I mean "guided by reason".

I think that we are going to have a conversation on a delightful caffe 
somewhere in the middle of Venice to discuss about this, because it's 
still not clear to me. :)

> Maybe we tend to forget what a "commercial company" is.  On the one
> hand, it is (by definition) a means to make money.  If it doesn't make
> money, it does not fulfil its primary purpose, and this means its
> broken, and should be either fixed or abandoned.  On the other hand, it
> should not be just the instrument of greediness of the owner(s).  They
> in turn are people, and their primary purpose is completely different.

This conversation is going to be an interestingly long one indeed.

> If you identify yourself too much with any kind of commercial endeavor,
> it is a sign of very serious problems.

> I taught Emacs to a friend, whom I sometimes show cool tricks.  Once
> I showed him multiple cursors, which required some choreography from my
> fingers, but I thought it was quite impressive.  Then he nodded and
> asked "I'm wondering what were you doing with your feet."

LOL!

> 
> Best,
> 
> --
> Marcin Borkowski
> http://mbork.pl

I hope to actually meet you one of these days :) .

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Stefan Monnier]

> Also, I'm not sure whether increasing freedom in one thing must imply
> reducing it in another one.

If you add "freedom to do X" you inevitably remove the "freedom from
having others do X".


        Stefan

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Gene]

> On Saturday, May 19, 2018 at 3:07:01 AM UTC-4, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: 
>> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 04:27:12PM -0700, Gene wrote:
> 
>> U = No
>> topia = place
> 
> <nitpick> that's Greek, afaik </nitpick>
> 
> ;-)

Point taken ... and accepted along with the whole fertile field as yet addressed.

The subjective experience at the heart of the complaint -- for both the plaintiff and on behalf of one and all -- is non-free, unfree software used as a form of hobble, constraint, or operational handicap ... as if the (im)proprietary' suchness had a thing to do with the REAL, deeper issue; it doesn't.

In this thread we've all been, with NO complaints thus far, (mis)using the language of the English -- with it's draconian-yet-fickle-and-irregular orthography, grammar, subject-object metaphysics, lack of regular verbs, bullshit `standard' usage, etc, ad nausuem.

Why not complain that `The Boss' wants all reports in ENGLISH -- rather than German, Japanese, or Italian, which might have been the case had WWII turned out different?
Why not complain that deep-structural semantics are being obfuscated by a preference for ANY surface-structural so-called `natural' -- no less artificial or man-made than so-called `artificial' -- language such as English?

The complaint underpinning this thread is too superficial; it floats among the flotsam and jetsam with miles of DEPTH between it and the `bottom of things'.

Why not complain that `The Boss' doesn't accept William Whitaker's Words allowing one to use Latin ... or any app which allows one to craft words consistent with the rules for generating neologisms in Greek?

Can we use the rules for crafting neologisms available to the users of Ancient Greek or Latin when (mis)using English ... when in many if not most Anglophone countries the use of neologisms and 3 consulting physicians can get one sent off to the loony bin as if the crafting and use of neologisms were sufficient evidence for a Schizophrenia charge-cum-diagnosis?

We've got elisp for use via computational linguistics, but we've been pandering to the orthography, grammar, serial ticker tape of pandering-to-SOUND glyphs of English?

It's the non-free proprietariness of it all which seems insufferable ... as we pander-to and bow-before the hegemony of the would-be `natural' language arising more due to the caprice of which side won a world war than anything `rational'.

How `rational' seems this?

#+begin_src elisp
(setq
  U 
          "No"
  Topia 
          "Place"

  hyphenated-neologism
    (mapconcat 'identity `(,U ,Topia) "-")
)

#+end_src

Given the functional paradigm, computational linguistics, and the elisp functions split-string and mapconcat, why do we hand craft `literal strings' rather than symbolic expressions which generate the superficial surface structures of whatever `natural language' `The Boss' demands?

Why not transcend the proof-of-schizophrenia `neo'-ness of neologisms IN ENGLISH -- but not Latin or Greek -- by going further up the meta stream by programmatically ensuring that ALL text was generated anew with every generation of a side-effectual `report' pandering to whatever LANGUAGE `The Boss' arbitrarily specifies?

Ever so `rational' chemists can compose molecules from atoms and sub-assemblies of lower order molecules AND/OR exploit the inverse processes of decomposition.
How `rational' does it seem to NOT be able to decompose a word into roots, prefixes, and suffices but NOT cobble-together or synthesize new molecular WORDS -- perhaps to a holophrastic scope and scale -- BECAUSE `standard usage' and non conformance thereof may paint a target on one's back for targeting by language Nazis in cahoots with those with more-equal-pig status with a foot each in the Medical-Legal camps, in the metaphorical Animal Farm AKA `Mother Culture', as we are subjugated into COMPLIANCE -- into going along to get along -- while we bitch about ... what?

How rational seems it to set the angle of the blinders/blinkers to tunnel vision settings which allows THIS to seem figural while we're using one of the most mind-hobbling `natural' languages in the world, to discuss something less irrational than the language we're misusing to fumble around in our Universe of Discourse?

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 723 bytes --]


() Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
() Sat, 26 May 2018 15:34:27 -0400

   If you add "freedom to do X" you inevitably remove the
   "freedom from having others do X".

X is Free Software.
i write some, share it widely.
this stops your X how?

X is Free Software.
i write some, share it widely.
my code sucks, good luck!

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)               ; (2018) Software Libero
   (pcase (context query)               ;       = Dissenso Etico
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
--------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502


[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, May 26, 2018 at 06:02:03PM -0700, Gene wrote:
> > On Saturday, May 19, 2018 at 3:07:01 AM UTC-4, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: 
> >> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 04:27:12PM -0700, Gene wrote:
> > 
> >> U = No
> >> topia = place
> > 
> > <nitpick> that's Greek, afaik </nitpick>
> > 
> > ;-)
> 
> Point taken ... and accepted along with the whole fertile field as yet addressed.
> 
> The subjective experience at the heart of the complaint [...]

Sorry. Parsing this generates a stack overflow somewhere.

Cheers
- -- t
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r3gAnAtUC31I4BTjQrPlRyPce1Zgg7Kb
=AW4/
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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Stefan Monnier]

> >    If you add "freedom to do X" you inevitably remove the
> >    "freedom from having others do X".
> X is Free Software.
> i write some, share it widely.
> this stops your X how?

Of course, like all tradeoffs, some are trivial because the downside
is negligible.  Still, which part of what I wrote do you dispute?


        Stefan

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2247 bytes --]


() Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
() Sun, 27 May 2018 13:19:41 -0400

   > >    If you add "freedom to do X" you inevitably remove the
   > >    "freedom from having others do X".
   > X is Free Software.
   > i write some, share it widely.
   > this stops your X how?

   Of course, like all tradeoffs, some are trivial because the
   downside is negligible.  Still, which part of what I wrote do
   you dispute?

I'm not disputing anything (at least, i don't think so), besides
the assertion that i'm disputing anything.  :-D

My writing that is me scratching my chin, trying a value in a
variable position to see how the expression evaluates.

I suppose i was trying to find X that does / does not fulfill
the zero-sum vibe of what you wrote, expressing my thoughts in a
concise, stylized way.

Still, if a dispute aimed at a particular part must be conjured,
i suppose the word "inevitably" would be the obvious candidate.

My understanding of "freedom from having others do X" hinges on
"having others do X" to mean "delegation of X to others".  So,
when X is "writing/sharing free software", we get:

 If you add "freedom to w/s free software" you inevitably remove
 the "freedom from delegating w/s of free software to others".

This, to my ear, doesn't hold fully.  I can imagine myself a
hacker honcho w/ flunkies who i assign to do exactly what i am
trying to do (write/share free software), perhaps even the same
algorithm, for purposes of downstream analysis, deconstruction
and re-synthesis to form the "best" implementation.  There is no
no inevitability of removal in this scenario (that i can see).

Anyway, these are new thoughts, so thanks for provoking them!
(My original ponderings were not so profound.)  This dispute is
a quite a stretch, anyway (i'm out of practice) -- what am i
missing?

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)               ; (2018) Software Libero
   (pcase (context query)               ;       = Dissenso Etico
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
--------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502


[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: General advice beyond Org

[edgar]

On 2018-05-27 17:19, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> >    If you add "freedom to do X" you inevitably remove the
>> >    "freedom from having others do X".
>> X is Free Software.
>> i write some, share it widely.
>> this stops your X how?
> 
> Of course, like all tradeoffs, some are trivial because the downside
> is negligible.  Still, which part of what I wrote do you dispute?
> 
> 
>         Stefan

I guess that this got lost in the mailbox (because--I just noticed--I 
did not edit the subject):



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: help-gnu-emacs Digest, Vol 186, Issue 39
Date: 2018-05-26 07:24
 From: edgar@openmail.cc
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

> Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 15:19:29 -0400
> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: General advice beyond Org
> 
>> We are talking about people's freedom.
> 
> "Freedom" is a vague concept, applied in very subjective ways.

Yep. That's what I meant before (a very human concept). Still, does not 
prevent us from trying to understand or define it.

> It's not like you can increase freedom in some respect without reducing
> it elsewhere.

This sounded like a scratching blackboard. These are not my words:

      “once a {person} has seen that values depend upon {her or himself, 
(s)}he can
       will only one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation
       of all values.” Sartre is clear that freedom underpins every
       choice we make, and so (as our values are nothing more than
       our choices) freedom underpins every value we create. So
       when I choose I am not only choosing a particular action, I
       am also willing the freedom which enables me to make that
       choice in the first place. We can add in here Sartre’s view
       that whatever I choose myself I am also choosing as an image
       or ideal for the whole of humanity. Therefore, whenever I
       make any free choice of my own I am also willing freedom for
       the whole of humanity; I am universalising freedom.

I am not a philosopher, but the guy who wrote it was. Now, we could ask 
Nietzsche or Hume what they think about this, and see the sparks from 
afar. :P

> So "rational" doesn't have much to do with it.

If trying to understand it or define it is not an option, I agree :) .

>         Stefan

Thank you, Stefan. May be we could get together one of these days to 
discuss more about the subject. In the mean time, I want to express my 
appreciation to all of your comments.

---- End forwarded message ----

I came here asking for your help on a particular issue that I need to 
solve. Although the discussion about freedom is a very needed one, I 
wish not to take responsibility on its development on this forum (it 
seems like hijacking). I would suggest the readers and writers to go 
through the history of philosophy (or some sort of monograph) to find 
the answers which others have already produced on the topic. It is not 
by chance that there is still a discussion on whether one should produce 
software with GPL (and adherents) or not. This discussion seems to be 
drifting towards closed v.s. proprietary v.s. non-free v.s. free 
software. To me, there needs to be a real discussion which remains 
recorded, but I don't know if the moderators and other users of this 
list are going to appreciate it if it happens here. Out of respect, I 
recuse myself.

As I have expressed already, I thank all of you very much for your 
comments on my personal issue :)

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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Stefan Monnier]

> My understanding of "freedom from having others do X" hinges on
> "having others do X" to mean "delegation of X to others".  So,

No, I meant that you will have to endure the fact that others will also
have the freedom to do X.  It makes most sense in cases where X is
something like "spit in people's face".


        Stefan

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1180 bytes --]


() Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
() Mon, 28 May 2018 15:21:09 -0400

   > My understanding of "freedom from having others do X"
   > hinges on "having others do X" to mean "delegation of X to
   > others".  So,

   No, I meant that you will have to endure the fact that others
   will also have the freedom to do X.  It makes most sense in
   cases where X is something like "spit in people's face".

Thanks for clarifying.  I understand now (i think).

I once talked w/ someone face to face who stood very close.  He
was inadvertantly spitting in my face during the conversation.
I had to remind myself that offence is taken and perhaps not
given.  Even if the intent was to give offense (which i doubt),
i (luckily, for the topic was interesting) was able to decline.

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (query)               ; (2018) Software Libero
   (pcase (context query)               ;       = Dissenso Etico
     (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml))
     ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
--------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502


[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Emanuel Berg]

Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:

> I once talked w/ someone face to face who
> stood very close. He was inadvertantly
> spitting in my face during the conversation.
> I had to remind myself that offence is taken
> and perhaps not given. Even if the intent was
> to give offense (which i doubt), i (luckily,
> for the topic was interesting) was able
> to decline.

Perhaps an even better solution would have been
to introduce him/her to Usenet and mailing
lists? At least with Gnus, I think the
spit-thru is disabled by default.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Emanuel Berg]

Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:

> Thanks for clarifying. I understand now (i
> think).
>
> I once talked w/ someone face to face who
> stood very close. He was inadvertantly
> spitting in my face during the conversation.
> I had to remind myself that offence is taken
> and perhaps not given. Even if the intent was
> to give offense (which i doubt), i (luckily,
> for the topic was interesting) was able
> to decline.

BTW how nice to see you on gnu.emacs.help
again :)

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8559 bytes --]

Just an update to let you know that I decided to migrate from
Org-mode+LaTeX to ODF-and-related, particularly because of LPPL+GPL
incompatibility, caused by LaTeX and related projects and because
ODF-and-related are easier for the other people to participate and see
the changes (no need to compile a .pdf nor to download 4 GiB of software).

ODF 1.2 (which is used by default at least in LibreOffice 5) is good and
offers many features similar to Org-mode, including adding files to each
other, interacting with spreadsheets (look for "relative DDE link"), and
also offers bibliography/reference manageemnt, along many other things.

Although I do want to point out that you might want to go to View ->
Disable "Show figures", so that LibreOffice Writer .odt documents are
more editable and less slow.

Also, note that you must recommend people to use LibreOffice to open the
files. Microsoft says to have support, but it's not excellent.

You may also want to import other .odt/.rtf/.doc/.docx files inside the
main one. The tricks are that if you do so using "Insert" -> "Section"
and tick "Link", the inserted section will use the main document's
styles, not their own. Besides, for these files, since they *do* have
notion of what is a "page break", then they will inevitably start in the
next page. Also, inserting them this way may replace or add document
metadata/properties (look in "File" -> "Properties"). at the same time,
some files that you want to add are actually drawings made in
LibreOffice Draw. In all the cases you might want to keep their own
styling. To do this export them to .pdf.

I use this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Please close any running LibreOffice, or `soffice' silently fails.
# No need to specify target file name.
while read each_file
do
  soffice --headless \
	-convert-to pdf \
	"${each_file}"
done <<end_of_list
Preserve styles.docx
Contract.doc
Multi-page document with spaces in name.odt
Drawing.odg
end_of_list
------------------------------------------------------------------------

After this, if you happen to need to import these .pdf files into your
document, use ImageMagick's `convert' command to do the conversion to
.png. For example:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
# `-units' and `-density' are important to be set before .pdf input
# according to what I will do, otherwise there will be loss of quality.
while read pdf_file
do
  convert -units PixelsPerInch \
	-density 300 \
	"${pdf_file}" \
	"$(echo "${pdf_file}" | sed 's/\.pdf$/.png/g')"
done <<end_of_list
Preserve styles.pdf
Multi-page document with spaces in name.pdf
Drawing.pdf
end_of_list
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This will take care of multi-page .pdfs, since the .png files will be
like "Original name-0.png", "Original name-1.png", "Original
name-2.png", and so on. Zero (0) is the first page.

After this conversion, go to the main document, "Insert" ->
"Figure"/"image", tick the box that has "Link" and select the image that
you want to insert. Do this for each .png image.

The "link" options are important so that the main document picks any
change made to the .png image, otherwise LibreOffice will insert the
entire image in the .odt, which will also make it more heavier to attach
in e-mails (but requires the other person to also have the linked file
in the same place).

A caveat of the manual .png insertion is that if a .pdf happens to have
more or less pages than the last conversion to .png, then you will need
to add or delete the related links and their corresponding figures in
the main .odt file. If someone has better solution please share.

Additionally, one can't do "Insert" -> "OLE Object" to insert .odg or
.ods files because these *cannot* break across pages, and don't look
good when printing. This OLE feature wasn't made for printing purpose,
but to facilitate editing without leaving the same program. If I recall
correctly, it's a Microsoft kludge.

As for tabular/table results produced by R, use and abuse of
`write.csv'. Besides, make R output graphics to a .png image (use the
`png' command/device). For all of this, write an .R/.r file and use
Rscript to run it.

The R-produced .png files can be inserted in the main .odt document I
described earlier, no need to repeat the explanation. What you need to
tweak in the `png' R command/device is the `pointsize' and `res'
arguments. Something like this would do:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
## The variables are here just for explanation.

## The standard DPI/`res' of the `png' command/device.
R_img_dpi <- 72

## The standard pointsize of the `png' command/device.
R_pointsize <- 12

## The new DPI/`res' of our image, to make things sharp.
## Just changing `width' or `height' isn't enough.
sharp_img_dpi <- 90

png(file="Plot.png",
	height = 768,
	pointsize = R_pointsize * sharp_img_dpi / R_img_dpi,
	res = sharp_img_dpi,
	width = 1024)

plot(something)
## ... or output some graphic.

## Close/save the .png image.
dev.off()
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now you ask, how to insert the .csv files in the main .odt document as
tables in a dynamic way (such that if the .csv contents are changed by a
external application, LibreOffice picks the modifocation)?

To partially answer that question, I suggest you to make a new .ods
spreadsheet set/document, and for each .csv, use "Spreadsheet" ->
"Insert spreadsheet from file", select the .csv, enable/tick "Link",
save the .ods. With that done, go to the spreadsheet/tab in LibreOffice
Calc that you want to insert in your main .odt, click on the square
between the column name A and which is above row name 1 (this will
select the entire spreadsheet), copy (Ctrl + C), and Ctrl + Shift + V in
the .odt, select "DDE link".

To style the table, do it in the .odt document, not in the .ods
spreadsheet. Particularly, if you want to make tables with consistent
formating, make the first example table according to your needs then use
the "Table" -> "Style and formating" -> "Add" option to make that
formatting into a new table style. Note however that applying this to
other tables doesn't establish a "style" relationship as is done in the
case of other elements in LibreOffice, so I cannot expect every "Black
1"-styled table to change if I ever update/remake the "Black 1" table
style, so my advice is that these styles deal with display of
tables/cells/rows/columns themselves, not their contents/text. For these
you are better off changing the "Table content" and "Table
title/heading" paragraph styles.

Another caveat of this method is that the DDE column/row references are
absolute ("take from 1 to 3") and as far as I know there is no way to
say "take the entire spreadsheet even if new columns/rows are added".

Again, if someone has a better method that addresses both caveats,
please share.

Finally, there is a known bug[1] in LibreOffice Writer in which DDE
links from Calc .ods files are inserted referring to the absolute path
of the file. So after doing the "Ctrl + Shift + V, select 'DDE link'",
go to "Edit" -> "Links", double-click in the corresponding "soffice"
link to the .ods file, and in "File" field, and change that to relative
path, inserting "file:./" at the start, like so:

Old path: /home/adfeno/Docs/Work/Spreadsheets in the same directory.ods
New path: file:./Spreadsheets in the same directory.ods

Or if the spreadsheets are in some parent directory, use "file:../",
like so:

Old path: /home/adfeno/Docs/Spreadsheets in parent directory.ods
New path: file:../Spreadsheets in parent directory.ods

And so on for traversing to outer directories:

Old path: /home/adfeno/Docs/Contract/Spreadsheets in contract.ods
New path: file:../Contract/Spreadsheets in contract.ods

Similarly:

Old path: /home/adfeno/Spreadsheets at home.ods
New path: file:../../Spreadsheets at home.ods


All in all, the command-line steps are great because you can append
these in the main .odt itself (to be printed verbatim) using "Insert" ->
"Section", and since they are plain text files, it won't make the text
start in new page (so you can write a section title before them).

Happy hacking! :D


[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47223


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Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marco]

Hey fellow orgers,

I started as post-doc almost 10 years ago, I made a point in having
linux on my desktop and only use software I see fit - and know - such
R, and LaTeX to write papers. The occasional word/excel document I
opened with libreoffice/wps office or more frequently remotely on a
windows server / on a virtualbox, same with the occasional
windows-only piece of software I needed to use.
After 8-9 years of mockery, my whole departement is now switching to
LiNuX/LaTeX/python/R/jupyter, with the exception of a few specialized
softwares which are windows-only and will run on selected
machines/servers. Point is, also the secretary has to migrate, she was
the greatest advocate against the change.
No luck yet with emacs + org with my colleagues, but hey, one step at a time ;)
If your research and daily work involves programming/modelling I
actually don't see any point in staying on windows. Unices have LOTS
of advantages. The best general-purpose research tools nowadays are
free/libre software (since 3D FEM was named: openfoam, moose,
opencascade/salome, code_aster just to name a few... ), that is, if
you are developing something and not just running models, their steep
learning curve pays off immediately. If it's just a matter of running
specific models maybe there are other specialized softwares which may
be more efficient (e.g., avizo for 3D microtomography, eclipse /
petrel for geological modelling and reservoir engineering). In the
realm of statistics/machine learning/AI it's all linux-based free
software (think about keras + tensorflow with R and Python, but loads
and loads of other similar stuff out there).
So in my opinion in a research environment there are 2 kinds of
activities: computational/programming stuff, where unix and free
software have a clear advantage both on desktops and of course on HPC
(of course it depends how it looks like in your domain AND in your
research group), and on the other side wiriting documents and
interacting with others (reports, proposals, data exchange, papers).
You should have 100% control of the first category, but still have to
factor in cooperation with colleagues (i.e.: if everyoen is working on
matlab and you are supposed to extend and re-use their developments...
probably you should too. At least try sci-lab and octave); but you can
definitely compromise on the second.
Cheers and good luck,
domanov

Re: General advice beyond Org

[Grant Rettke]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 3:58 AM, Marco <domanov@gmail.com> wrote:
> I started as post-doc almost 10 years ago,

Thanks for your share Marco.