A C tutorial

[Joona I Palaste]

The 1 to 1 correspondence between what you see on the screen and what you
get printed is a big bonus when selectively printing parts of the
document, which is what I often do. And high resolution screens are
commonly available these days (1050x1400 for laptops, 1200x1600 for
desktops) for people who want to enjoy the quality of a good PDF
renderer.

Last but not least, having the complete document, which can be a thick
book, in a single file of reasonable size is extremely convenient.

I don't like PDF for documents where plain text would do equally well,
like most of the C standard. But once multiple fonts are a *real* need,
as well as pictures and complex diagrams, not to mention *proper* support
for languages other than English and whatever can fit into Latin-1, I have
yet to see something better than PDF.

I agree with you, and may I add that one other reason for preferring
PDFs is that they're easy to generate from PostScript documents, which
can be made to include mathematical symbols not found in pretty much
any ISO-8859-x character set, by using LaTeX. I have found this a very
good thing when writing homework solutions in mathematics.

 

[nrk]

I agree with you, and may I add that one other reason for preferring
PDFs is that they're easy to generate from PostScript documents, which
can be made to include mathematical symbols not found in pretty much
any ISO-8859-x character set, by using LaTeX. I have found this a very
good thing when writing homework solutions in mathematics.

The LaTeX->dvi->ps->pdf is the correct way to generate butt-ugly PDF files.
They print fine, but viewing them on screen is torture and you can't copy
and paste normally. You should try pdflatex sometime.

-nrk.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Clearly, you made a mistake the first time, and used K&R1, even though
you yourself mentioned K&R2 previously.

Indeed - I was looking in K&R, which is the one on my shelf at home. K&R2 s
in the office.

I'm not disagreeing with your arguments btw, I just don't see any
reason to try and cover up such a simple mistake.

I didn't realise till later in the thread that the examples were different,
and by then I'd decided that Richard was annoying me enough for me to use
the error to further obfuscate the "debate" if one can dignify if with such
a word.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

It's clear that he's using K&R1, despite writing K&R2 above.

That seems like a plausible explanation. I was beginning to wonder!

 

[Dan Pop]

I have not claimed that I can do this (in fact, the absence of full screen
video in standard C makes it impossible to do portably, as any newbie ought
to know). But 1-13 is a different matter.

Remove any "less" features having anything to do with full screen support
and my challenge still stands. Simply assume a 25-line console with
scroll support when needing to display a new page of text.


Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

It's sufficient for clear communication to occur, yes.

Not even in English, if complex mathematical formulas and foreign names
have to be properly included, much less in most other languages.
And obviously not if the clear communication would require pictures,
complex diagrams and screen shots.

It would be different if the target medium were paper (e.g. for a book, a
magazine article, or whatever); in those circumstances, it's appropriate to
use, say, PostScript or even PDF, or basically whatever the publishers want
- after all, they're the ones that have to print it. But when publishing
material on the Net, I see no reason arbitrarily to restrict one's audience
by choosing esoteric file formats.

A file format with open specification and open source readers hardly
qualifies as an esoteric file format.

If you don't like PDF, that's fine with me, but there is no point in
publicly complaining about it.

What I don't like are the horribly formatted documents (especially the
ones requiring horizontal scrolling), but it would be downright idiotic
to blame PDF on that.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

Dan Pop wrote:



I was talking about not trusting Adobe.

You were talking about not trusting tools whose source code is not
publicly available, because they could contain malicious code. And I
was pointing out that, if this is really your concern, open source tools
are no safer from this point of view, unless you're compiling them
yourself, with your hand made compiler.

Dan

 

[Richard Heathfield]

In <[email protected]> Richard Heathfield


You were talking about not trusting tools whose source code is not
publicly available, because they could contain malicious code.

I was talking about not trusting Adobe's tools whose source code is not
publicly available. I don't trust Adobe. Simple as that.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

In <[email protected]> Richard Heathfield


Remove any "less" features having anything to do with full screen support
and my challenge still stands. Simply assume a 25-line console with
scroll support when needing to display a new page of text.

There is no good answer to this challenge. The addition of interactivity
makes FILE * a necessity if the thing is to be done portably and
efficiently, and FILE * isn't introduced in the early part of K&R2. (Note
that my challenge to Mark McIntyre did not include an interactivity
requirement.)

 

[CBFalconer]

Dan Pop wrote:
.... snip ...

I was talking about not trusting Adobe's tools whose source code is
not publicly available. I don't trust Adobe. Simple as that.

You must have some concrete reasons. Are they shareable?

 

[Dan Pop]

I was talking about not trusting Adobe's tools whose source code is not
publicly available. I don't trust Adobe. Simple as that.

And I was explaining to you that even if it were, that would prove
exactly zilch, unless you compiled it with your hand made compiler.

Furthermore, there are open source PDF readers, so your point is moot,
anyway.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

There is no good answer to this challenge. The addition of interactivity
makes FILE * a necessity if the thing is to be done portably and
efficiently, and FILE * isn't introduced in the early part of K&R2. (Note
that my challenge to Mark McIntyre did not include an interactivity
requirement.)

How can I read a 10+ page document with a non-interactive file reader?

Dan

 

[Richard Heathfield]

You must have some concrete reasons.

Yes, I do.

Are they shareable?

Not being a lawyer, I am not sure, and I'd rather not take the chance, given
their track record.

 

[Joe Wright]

Yes, I do.


Not being a lawyer, I am not sure, and I'd rather not take the chance, given
their track record.

Like Chuck, I a also curious. I am considering purchasing Acrobat as we
speak. You haven't seemed particularly paranoiac in the recent past.
What gives? Adobe notwithstanding, what practices of a software company
violate your trust? (The lawyers can't get you for answering that one.
Maybe.)

 

[Dan Pop]

Like Chuck, I a also curious. I am considering purchasing Acrobat as we
speak. You haven't seemed particularly paranoiac in the recent past.
What gives? Adobe notwithstanding, what practices of a software company
violate your trust? (The lawyers can't get you for answering that one.
Maybe.)

He's merely making a lame attempt at saving his ass from this discussion.
Isn't it obvious enough?

Dan

 

[Richard Heathfield]

He's merely making a lame attempt at saving his ass from this discussion.
Isn't it obvious enough?

Last time I checked, I didn't own any livestock. Even if I did, it would
hardly be put at risk by a Usenet discussion.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Like Chuck, I a also curious. I am considering purchasing Acrobat as we
speak. You haven't seemed particularly paranoiac in the recent past.

Thanks. I'll leave it at that, if I may. Like so many Usenet discussions,
this one has amplified a minor matter out of all proportion, and made it
seem like some huge deal. It isn't. I just don't trust Adobe, for reasons
which I don't care to share. Dan Pop can make what hay he likes out of
that, but when all's said and done we are not only way off-topic but also
in danger of making a very small point seem very important.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Yes, I do.


Not being a lawyer, I am not sure, and I'd rather not take the chance, given
their track record.

If they are true then the lawyers can't touch you. So spill.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Thanks. I'll leave it at that, if I may. Like so many Usenet discussions,
this one has amplified a minor matter out of all proportion, and made it
seem like some huge deal. It isn't. I just don't trust Adobe, for reasons
which I don't care to share.

Richard, I'm going to be just a little bit rude here, and point out that
when I similarly said that I didn't plan to explain further, you said that
this showed I was in fact making it all up.

I hope that you will think a little about this, and realise that such sauce
can be poured over both birds.

I'm not saying I disbelieve you by the way.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Richard, I'm going to be just a little bit rude here, and point out that
when I similarly said that I didn't plan to explain further, you said that
this showed I was in fact making it all up.

If that is true, it is certainly not rude to point it out. I am not in the
habit of accusing people of making stuff up, though*, and I don't in fact
recall saying any such thing. Of course, I may have said it and not
remembered that I said it.

(*Well, I can think of one obvious exception, but that's in another
newsgroup.)