Li@Rutgers@sri-unix (12/04/82)
From: Tony <Li@Rutgers> After looking over the stuff on Marc, I found that I really liked it. BUT! Marc is a hackers os. It looks great for me and for those of you out there who are 'computer literate', but a real pain for the rest of the world. Imagine a secretary trying to figure out about personal bins. Unless she's had UNIX 101 at her local community college, she's totally blown away. MARC won't be used in many business environments for the same reasons that UNIX isn't. It isn't TRIVIAL! CP/M on the other hand has the reverse problem. The secretary loves it because she can figure it out. Everything is simple and straightforward, and she isn't trying to exceed the capabilities of the system. For you, me and the rest of the hacking community, CP/M is nothing more than a program loader. There are many things that we'd like to have that just aren't possible under a vanilla flavored CP/M system. The os is so simple that we want more capabilities built in. What is the solution? We need an os that makes business users and hackers happy. Is there a solution? Not on the horizon. We don't even have a universal type of os for a mainframe, much less a micro. So where do we go folks? Tony [Li @ Rutgers] -------
clark.wbst@Parc-Maxc@sri-unix (12/07/82)
It is true that UNIX is non-trivial, but allowing reasonable intellegence and no background, secretaries can use it. The Purdue EE departmant has a "technical typing" department that uses UNIX to edit and format papers, TRs, etc. Misc secretaries around the department also use it. You don't have to understand how unix works to use it, including the private bin, or string of paths to search for a program any more than you need to understand about how all the little registers and stacks work to program your TRS-80 in basic. All you need to know is to type "e filename" to edit a file, and "print file" or "proof file" to print it, or whatever the macro (shell file) is called. A UNIX type can set up a small number of very simple commands to allow a blank mind to use the system for any well defined task. Question: Would you rather explain how to use pip to copy a file, or explain the cryptic command: cp old-file new-file actually, you COULD rename the cp command "copy" and make it easier still. --Ray