Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!cheddar.cc.ubc.ca!halliday
From: halliday@cheddar.cc.ubc.ca (Laura Halliday)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Remote NeXT Users, etc.
Summary: You can't have everything.
Message-ID: <5103@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 89 23:45:47 GMT
References: <8248@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca
Reply-To: halliday@cc.ubc.ca (Laura Halliday)
Organization: UBC Computing Centre, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 34

In article <8248@oregon.uoregon.edu> joe@oregon.uoregon.edu (Joe St Sauver) writes:
>Remote Users -- Beyond the Pale?
>
>I agree with Joe Stone that NeXT is wrong to treat remote users as if they are
>beyond the pale just because they aren't sitting in from of a MegaPixel 
>display. 
>
> (stuff deleted...)
>
>The existence of documentation locked into WriteNow-only format is one example 
>of NeXT's hubris, as is being told that Preferences is "the" way to change 
>user passwords. (more deleted...)

To a certain extent, you have a point; perhaps some of these beefs will be
fixed, if not in 1.0, then maybe in 1.1.

Face it, though: unless you use something like X Windows, remote users *are*
second class citizens...as an example, I'm composing this message from home,
using my modem and running a terminal emulation program on my PS/2. The
machine at the other end is a Sun-3/280, but I can't run Sunview remotely.
I can't become the super user remotely. There are many things I can't do
remotely. So what?

People who are grumbling about WriteNow documentation, rather than grumbling,
should sit down and hack together the nroff analogue of WriteNow, so that
they can see online documentation in a restricted but still legible manner.
You're going to lose a lot of what makes NeXT special, and I honestly
don't know what you're going to do about pictures, but, if WriteNow works
the way I think it does, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Put a NeXT on my desk and I could do a first approximation to such a program
in a couple of hours. So could you. Don't grumble; go do it. 

...laura