True Type Fonts

[Stephen J. Turnbull <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> Ian == Ian W Wright <Ian [at] iw63.demon.co.uk> writes:

Ian> Thanks to everyone for the info - I'm now totally
Ian> confused...xfs..xfstt..xsfst urls

X Font Server, X Font Server - TrueType, and X Font Server -
FreeType. (I don't know any xsfst, but I have seen xfsft.)

On the other hand, the fact that there are people around to whom the
acronym XFS is not obvious means Linux is penetrating beyond the
society of congenital geeks. :-) Cool!

Ian> Why can't linux people use real, meaningful names for
Ian> programs??

Because Linux people are interested in cross-platform and backward
compatibility. Unlike the Windows[tm][1] world, where not upgrading
to the latest version means serious (extra[2]) risk of data loss (and
guaranteed loss of data interchangability), Unix systems just keep on
ticking (the original Energizer bunnies). So there are still Linux
0.99pl13 systems out there serving up Web pages, and there are
(whatever the system is) that has the silly 14 character restriction
on file names still running.

Linux applications need to be somewhat compatible even with those,
especially when they are _not_ Linux applications (xfs is an XFree86
application on almost all Linux systems). So short abbreviations
remain in vogue (since you probably need to have files like xfs-core.c
etc in the source).

I will say that we _should_ add commands like help, shit, and
fuck[3] (I know those are used, after my system got cracked I took a
look at all the .bash_history's on my system to see if there was any
suspicious activity; with permission, of course. I also saw passwords
in history files with world-read set, the latter my fault, of course
partly the distribution's too.) And they should all give newbie-
oriented help. The arguments to the first two panic commands are
usually useless, but arguments to the last one can often be used for a
rudimentary form of context sensitivity.

Footnotes:
[1] Tragically Masticated.

[2] Of course, under any Windows operating system, you cannot be
confident of data security against either accident or malicious
intrusion, because (a) all bets are off while an application is
crashing and (b) Microsoft leaves backdoors into their systems. Hell,
most people I know whose bad karma leaves them maintaining Windows
systems advise rebooting daily to avoid data loss.

[3] I think it was the MacLisp interpreter that used to return
*blush* I didn't think you knew words like that. I know that M-x
doctor in GNU Emacs knows those words ;-)

--
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Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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