Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question

[Rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 8:22:04 AM UTC+5:30, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> Emanuel Berg writes:
> 
> > "Pascal J. Bourguignon" 
> > writes:
> >
> >> I've got a few "electric" key bindings like that,
> >> for example, when I type three dots in a sequence,
> >> I get ...
> >
> > And when you type two "l"s in a row, do you get
> > a special char inserted for that as well? I'm sure
> > there is a Unicode char with two parallel vertical
> > bars. Isn't that an even better idea than the three
> > dots one, because it appears much more frequently? No?
> > Why not?
> 
> It's not a question of typing fast, it's a question of typing easy.
> It's easier to type ... to get ... 
> than to type C-x 8 RET HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS RET
> 

In http://blog.languager.org/2015/01/unicode-and-universe.html
I have written about 3 mutually exclusive and exhaustive prisons

 1. idiocy of ignorance
 2. slavery to savantery
 3. prison of penury


They correspond to:


1 Dummy
    To sell one's computer and work (and soul?) to a proprietary format and 
    word-processing software like Word
2 Wizard
    To master something arcnae such as latex (or mathml, lilypond, troff...)
3 Programmer
    Everything that is worth expressing can be expressed in ASCII.
    IOW...
    God made ASCII. All the rest is the work of man.

For a long time I used to be in category 3.
But of late I am rethinking¹ this position...
"Shakespeare is a better author than Gabriel García Márquez"²
seems a fine judgment to make.

"Shakespeare is a better author than Gabriel García Márquez because he used ASCII"
seems not so fine.

I know many people who would say Shakespeare was illiterate because he did 
not know how to use Word.
I think he is even more illiterate since he could never master the use of
a cell-phone.
----------------
¹ A rethinking for which emacs' neat input-methods is at least partly responsible
² I would have used Voltaire as example. Gabriel García Márquez makes my
point in the name itself!