Re: Graphic converter query - transparency

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Rowland McDonnell" <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Woody <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

Not much correlation between `palace' and `moat'.

No, I was thinking of castle.

I've not met many castles with moats - at least, not with moats
containing water.

I have been to castles with moats containing water, and castles that
used to have water, although most moats were dry so you could shoot
people in there.
I spent most of my childhood being dragged from one castle to the
next. My dad was keen on the things.

I was keen on them as a child and still am. Never saw many moats
containing water.

I hated them with a passion when I was a child. Nothing worse than
having to go round another castle.

I've always found that kind of claim really, /really/ stupidly witlessly
moronically wrong and annoying.

Its a figure of speech. Get over it.

My opinion has not changed: you're just going to have to deal with it.

Fair enough, I will try and ignore it when you say things like 'most
people prefer..' then.



(`Always' dating from the time when I was capable of understanding that
sort of claim - yes, really.)

So it irritated you when you were what, 2 or 3 years old when you could
understand it?

Something like that, yes - from reports that I have heard. Yes, really.

If you say so.

Even when still in a pram, I apparently didn't take kindly to baby talk
and things like that, showing a marked tendency to look at adults as if
they were - or so I am told.

As if they were... what?

Now I have no real feelings about them either way. I certainly don't
have the hatred for history I had when I was young.

Curious.

What that I don't hate it any more?

Curious that anyone should hate history.

<shrug> don't see why. People like and dislike all sorts of things. By
history in this context I mean things like old buildings, insignificant
chunks of wood, those sort of things.

History of people, told by people can be interesting.

[snip]

I really haven't a clue what you're on about. An ftp site is how to
make your installer available; an ftp site isn't a software installer in
itself.

Yes, thanks.

Unless you are a TeX expert, it's much better in general just to use the
standard big installer.

Fair enough. Just seemed a bit big for one little editor and a
processor.

Yes, if that's the view you have of MacTeX, you would be puzzled.

OK, I am puzzled. Is it not a processor?

If you were to read the readmes that explain what's supplied, you would
understand better and so not be puzzled.

I shall not attempt to explain since I have learnt that you prefer to
reject my explanations without making any attempt to understand them on
the whole, and this one would take a lot of effort.

Shows how little you learn!
I always enjoy your explanations, assume by explanations you don't mean
your normal way of repeating what you just said again until i agree.
I don't enjoy those as much.

Anyway, not really bothered. I downloaded it, and when I get a chance I
will have a look. Although at this rate it may be a while which is a
shame as I am interested in looking into it.

Thinking of TeX as something that `just processes text' is a flawed
approach.

The basic typsetting engine is exactly 336,996 bytes as compiled for
PPC.

Well, I don't have a PPC working any more

So what?

but yes, I get the point, the
binary is always small.

<rolls eyes> I checked the PPC binary because it was the obvious one
that I could find. So I didn't check the Intel version - so what?

The fact that I'm talking about something not absolutely identical to
what you see has nothing whatever to do with the matter.

Apart from not needing to know the exact size would be fine. For someone
who thinks that double a network bandwidth is about the same 'less than
half a meg' would have been fine. And beyond that I don't see what the
size of TeX has to do with anything.

The rest of it is support files to enable one to do things other than
just have access to the raw typesetting engine. You'll not get far
without a huge stash of fount support files, unless you want to use
XeTeX only. But it's all dealt with for you by the installer. And you
complain because you'd rather have something smaller to download - makes
no sense to me.

So you are saying that everything in that download is directly useful?

As any reasonable person could tell from what I wrote above, I am /of
course/ not making that rather general claim.

The point of the MacTeX installer is to install everything that is
likely to be found useful by more than a handful of people.

That means it's meant to install lots of stuff that any single given
user will have no interest in at all.

Yes. That is what I was saying about. I would have prefered a download
of the core important stuff that most people would use, and then when I
had tried and put some effort researching what I wanted I could find out
that I needed to get X or Y added on.

The reason it takes that approach is that the days of needed to whittle
down the data so that you could download it in a reasonable time are
gone, as are the days when you needed to whittle down the data so that
it'd fit on your hard disc drive.

They may be going, I really don't think they are gone.
By doing it that way it stops a lot of people using it.

It's no bother for the average user to download MacTeX - you're unusual
in complaining about it. MacTeX's just the efficient way of doing it.

The point here is that MacTeX does it the `efficient from the point of
view of the human' way, and you seem to be arguing that you'd rather
have *LOTS* of human time wasted to save a bit of disc load and a few
download minutes (which are irrelevant since they are purely machine
time).

No, I think it would be more of interest if people got the bits that
most people needed, and then addons if you want more specialised things.
However, disk space (which I never actually mentioned) and download
minutes are not irrelevant as they have to be paid for.
Maybe you don't have to pay for them, other people do.

And it does take a lot of time to download and bolt on each extra goodie
you want with TeX. In some cases, you have to configure the stuff too.

Well, that I didn't know.

Even though earlier you said it had image magik?

Which is directly useful to the applications that many people use LaTeX
for, yes: that's an excellent example of a non-TeX component that has
direct uses for many TeX users.

I don't understand your obsession with Image Magick

What obsession? Is it like your obsession with disk space?

I have no obsession - I used it as an example of something I didn't need
but downloaded anyway.

Image Magick is useful for you whatever, yes?

Not specifically at the moment, no.

You find it useful even without TeX being installed, so why keep on
about it?

Huh? Keeping on about it? You have mentioned it the same number of times
that I have, so I will stop 'keeping on about it' when you do!

I don't get it at all. You're objecting to an installer
because it's got software on it that you find useful? Huh?

What the hell are you talking about? How do you know I find it useful? I
don't, it is not useful, as I explained when you 'kept going on about
it' earlier. It wasn't useful the first time I got it, it isn't useful
to me the second time,

Are you mad, or what?

One of us clearly is

I don't think you quite understand just how powerful and flexible TeX
is. Check out the Beamer class for doing slides (presentation type
slides - a PowerPoint replacement, sort of).

No thanks. I manage to avoid powerpoint with quite a bit of effort, so I
really don't need to go looking for a replacement for it.

<puzzled> The point of Beamer is to let you do the jobs that PowerPoint
is meant to do with minimal effort and without using PowerPoint
(obviously). If you do not need to do the sort of jobs that Beamer is
designed to do, then it's useless - obviously. Otherwise, it's useful -
obviously.

obviously.

(You seem to be objecting to the fact that Beamer exists because it's
not something that you personally have a use for. Well, Woody, I've got
news for you: things that you personally have no use for are often very
useful for - wait for it! - other human beings who have different needs
to you. Can you get your head round that, Woody? Not everyone is the
same as you! Blimey, bit of a shock to the system, eh? How about you
sit down with a cuppa until it sinks in properly?)

Amazing. In that case it is a shame you can't download the bits that are
important to you, rather than the bits that are important to people that
think a powerpoint replacement is awfully clever.

You seem to be complaining that MacTeX installs what TeX users find
useful. You don't even seem to understand what TeX is for, so why are
you offering opinions? If you were a TeX user, then you'd be in a
position to comment - but you don't even seem to understand how to use
TeX or what to use it for.

Ahh, ok. I have no right to have an opinion as to what I want to do,
because I haven't used it.

Gotcha.

<shrug> So what? Pick another of the tens of thousands of classes and
packages etc until you find one that is.

Check out the Basic
interpreter written to run via TeX (or maybe not - that one's a bit of
silliness done simply because the programmer could).

umm.. ok, so that isn't much use either.

Argh. Yes, I know. The point is that there are tens of thousands of
classes and packages and other assorted bolt-ons available for TeX that
let you do things that someone with a naive understanding of TeX - i.e.,
you - would not think /could/ be done.

How would I not think it could be done?
I am sorry that I don't find a basic interpreter or a powerpoint
replacement mind blowing, or one of the miriad of other things I didn't
want but downloaded anyway, but I never even thought about them, let
alone decided they couldn't be done.


I did this not to give you an example of something useful, but to give
you an idea of how flexible things are so you would understand that TeX
lets people do a much wider range of things than you currently can
imagine.

Huh? I can imagine a hell of a lot of wider range of things than that,
so I really don't know what you are banging on at.

Many of these things are silly. Almost all of them are brutally
practically useful.

Well, yes, practically useful to someone somewhere.

Unfortunately, for some reason, you failed to understand that I was
trying to open your eyes to a world of richer understanding. A shame,
but there you go.

Unfortunately, for some reason, you fail to understand that it is clear
what you are saying, and that almost all of it was irrelevant to the
basic point.

The basic point was something that I said that was trivial and
unimportant.

All I said was 'It is a big install that I didn't have time to download
at the time', to which you go on a full explanation of all the
completely random things I could do with it.

I never said it didn't do anything, or that it wasn't the most
wonderful, versatile pice of software ever written by mankind, I just
said that it was too big to download at the time, which is entirely true
and undisputable.



TeX is used by some as a fully automated and `user invisible' back end
for typesetting XML and HTML for print. Some people use it to generate
HTML for use on the Web.

Yes, some people do odd things,

It's a very sensible use for TeX if you think about it in full context -
if you think it's odd, that's only because you don't understand what TeX
is for and how people integrate it into their workflows in order to save
time and effort in producing output of the highest possible quality.

Of course not. Apart from you and some people asking you here, I have
never met anyone in 26 years of full time employment (and one year of
the dole) that has mentioned it.





TeX's tiny - but TeX distributions aren't small because of the huge
range of support files for it.

Fair enough. It was only a comment, you don't need to make a big thing
out of it.

You made a big thing out of it - you made a huge complaint about that
point.


You have gone off on one again. I said:

I almost downloaded TeX at one point but I looked and it was huge - many
hundreds of meg and it was the first time I had got close to my download
limit so I didn't.

So I can understand how you have problems with ordinary people if you
think that that was a huge complaint.

Maybe you could explain how that is a huge big noisy complaint?
No, of course you can't

So I shot down your point using big guns because of the hugely
big noisy complaint you had been making out of what I considered an
irrelevancy.

And now I've responded to your hugely big noisy complaint in a fashion
that shoots down your ideas, you decide to change tack to a personal
attack on me - again.

No, you have dripped on at length about how brilliant tex is. Which is
completely irrelivant to the point above.

And I haven't made any attack on me.

You're a deeply dishonest debater, aren't you?

Unlike you with your stupid attacks like above.

As you say, it has image magik. I didn't want that, as I already
have it.

But you are lying again!

I am not lying for *** sake. Learn how to talk properly.

But you are blatently lying for fuck's sake you lying fucking tosser.

btw, just how far up do you want me to crank the offensive rudeness
level? I don't have an upper limit on that kind of thing.

I know.

Observed fact that you cannot reasonably deny:

If you didn't want Image Magick, you would not have installed it.

Mr hard of thinking. I installed image magic to help someone out with
something.

Observed fact that you cannot reasonably deny:

You /THEN/ claim that you didn't want Image Magick because you already
had it - huh?

Why on earth would I want to get something that I already have? That
would be stupid.


How can you expect anyone to believe something that's as obviously
untrue as that?

How can someone of reasonable intellegence come up with such a barkingly
stupid comment?

Ooh - hang on, I need word. Lets download it again as the version I have
isnt' enough.


I'm just not that stupid

No?

and I'm amazed that you thought I was

I didn't but I am prepared to change my mind!

[snip childish rants about lying]


My line is ok up to about 700kB/s, so if it is going at 600, that
is good,
if it is going at 300 then that is slow.
If that is all the other end is capable of then fair enough, but it
isn't, it was just my router or line slowing down.

You have no reason to assume that from what I can see.

I did assume that, and I was right.

You made the assumption, and you were mistaken to do so - obviously.

I made the assumption, which proved entirely correct. Obviously.

And you refuse to accept the possibility of error on your part, which is
yet another cognitive mistake on your part.

Yet even so I was right.

I decided to dowload it later when it may be faster, and it was.
Everything happy.

I am truly happy that my network connections are faster than they were
20 years ago, but it really has nothing to do whether my router is
working well now.

<pained> My point is that a 100% variation is speed ain't a lot when
considering a broadband connection, not with the way I see things
working here.

I know that is your point, and I disagree. we will just have to leave it
at that.

I don't see why you refuse to accept that your current ideas might
possibly be in error, but if you insist on being blinkered and stupid
there's nothing I can do about it.

I don't see why you can't view your ideas could be in error, and there
is nothing I can do about it either, which is why I suggest leaving it
at that.
What is wrong with a disagreement, or is it so vital that people say you
are right all the time?

I also have to have office anyway, so I am not saving anything.

If no part of MS Office is running, you're saving CPU. You might
say that doesn't matter - well, I find it an affront to my
sensibilities to have an application idling but using CPU anyway.

TeX doesn't idle. It runs, then stops.

Obviously, it is a processor rather than an editor.

MS Word processes as you edit.

It does, like pretty well any editor.

Text editors don't process text as you edit - they just display the
data.

There is a lot of processing of text going on as you edit. Whether you
see it or not.

Not with an traditional plain text editor, there's not.

If you're talking about one of these modern fancy `it's really a WP but
it calls itself a text editor', you're talking about something other
than what I'm talking about and so your point is irrelevant.

No, I am talking about something like textedit

[snip]

And in any case, DeBabelizer always felt a bit dodgy to me.

DeBabelizer was possibly a bit more flakey than graphic converter,
but it was the only thing that did the job I needed it to do for a
while, so that is what I went for. Then I got photoshop 1.9, and
that was great.

I've never much liked Photoshop when I've tried it. I can't say Digital
Darkroom impressed me either.

I don't think I know digital darkroom. Was it an old thing? Sounds
familiar from somewhere.

Digital Darkroom is what Photoshop was before they changed the name to
Photoshop.

Do you get my point yet?

Did you have one?

Your point being you know more than I do because you know what photoshop
was called before the 90s?

--
Woody

www.alienrat.com
.

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