Re: Math mode wackiness in memoir class.

In article <1152433526.038894.104720@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Mark Mephinasony <twisted0n3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
biased in favor of those who ask questions politely

My initial posts to threads here have all been quite civil, thank you
very much.

Can you say the same about follow-ups?

read any answers carefully

If the replies consisted of pure wheat I might; I quickly discovered
that there's a fairly high volume of replies with a fairly high
chaff-to-wheat ratio here, however, which necessitates skimming for the
essentials rather than carefully reading everything word by word.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I infer from the above that you
consider your time more valuable than that of the people who have
replied to your posts. Whatever the underlying truth, I doubt it's
useful (in terms of getting help) to give this impression.

And then there was the exchange in which someone suggested that
you add "\nonstopmode" (or whatever it was) to the beginning of
your source file, and you thought this was meant as a command-line
option, and much confusion ensued, all of which could have been
avoided if you'd read more carefully.

[ snip ]

people who seem quick to point out the defects of the tools they're trying

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I also suggest, concretely, how to
improve the tools when an idea occurs to me. The general attitude here
seems to be to regard the tools as, varying from one person to the
next, either a) perfect and Thou Shalt Not defile this froup by
suggesting they are in any way less than perfect or insult the tools by
suggesting improvements! or b) yeah, they're a bit crufty, but
can't/won't be changed, and if you suggest any fixes we will come up
with exotic, real-world-improbable contrived examples to "prove" that
your fixes would be evil and nasty, or at least keep nitpicking the
hell out of them with corner cases.

People sometimes get defensive when their favorite tools are attacked.
It's not optimal behavior, but it's reality.

From now on, if I suggest a change/improvement of some sort, consider
coping with corner cases and/or localization to be exercises left to
the reader, OK?

\begin{snark}
Right. Your contribution is to point out where the tools are,
in your opinion (*), lacking. It's someone else's job to actually
make the desired changes, after figuring out all the consequences
and corner cases. And of course they will do this for free (unless
they're lucky enough to have a job that pays them, at least in part,
for their work on free / open-source software).
\end{snark}

(*) Maybe others would even agree. Or maybe not. Your apparent
dislike for the command line tells me that your preferences are
probably not identical with those of everyone in this group, so
what you consider an enhancement someone else might regard as a
waste of time. I don't want to argue who's right here, just to
point out that opinions differ.

Oh, and notice the extra ">" in front of the "From"? That is, as
far as I can tell, part of your posting as provided to me by my NNTP
server. (Anyone else get the same thing? or not? artifact of
posting through Google Groups?)

[ snip ]

Secondly, a certain mindset tends to regard any asking of "but WHY?" or
suggested fixes to broken/crufty tools/interfaces to be
"argumentative". But "but WHY?" is a perfectly valid question deserving
of an honest answer, and as I already mentioned, suggesting fixes is
surely better than leaving what many consider to be improvable tools
unimproved.

If you're looking for a justification (a "why this is, and it's
good") for all of your "why?" questions, you will probably be
disappointed. Sometimes the only answer to "why?" is "because
that's how it is" (possibly with a historical explanation).
Anyone who has worked on a large piece of software with a longish
lifespan will probably recognize this phenomenon; there's probably
something similar in other areas of life as well. Sometimes design
decisions are made that in retrospect are not optimal. Revisiting
them is often considered to be more trouble than it's worth. You
may know this.

The weird thing here is that I suspect some of my detractors are, in
fact, trying to act in good faith (as am I), yet we keep coming
virtually to blows. Why?

Could be. My impression is that you got crosswise with the regulars
almost immediately, for reasons not entirely your fault, and after
that any further discussion is apt to be colored by the history.
"It happens in Usenetland", maybe?

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.

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