Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder2.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Phillip Frabott <nntp@fulltermprivacy.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: What programs do you make sure are installed on a new Linux
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024 09:33:44 -0500
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On 11/16/2024 16:20, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 16 Nov 2024, Phillip Frabott wrote:
> 
>> On 11/16/2024 04:31, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024, Phillip Frabott wrote:
>>>
>>>> nano
>>>> git
>>>> openssh
>>>> gnutls
>>>> links
>>>> bash
>>>> automake
>>>> autoconf
>>>> gcc
>>>> mutt
>>>> htop
>>>> iotop
>>>> gomuks
>>>> tmux
>>>> WordGrinder
>>>>
>>>> and that's it.
>>>>
>>>> When I'm done I go home and spend the evening with family.
>>>
>>> Wordgrinder is not a common choice. Could you please tell me a bit 
>>> about it? Wat is it with wordgrinder that guys you joy when writing 
>>> texts?
>>
>> I should probably note, if it's not apparent in the list above, I live 
>> in bash. I do not use a WM day-to-day. I'm a purist shell-only user. 
>> WordGrinder is the only shell program I was able to find that has 
>> support great support for ODT, a format that I have to be able to use 
>> at work since almost all of our documents are either ODT or MD (Mostly 
>> ODT). It has a pretty decent spell checker that you can add to it's 
>> dictionary and has pretty good formatting support within the 
>> limitations of shell (You won't be adding images, but I don't get paid 
>> enough to make documentation with pretty pictures anyways). It is 
>> probably the most feature-rich shell application I've found so far. 
>> You can look at it here if you want: https://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/
>>
>> If you have a recommendation for something other then WordGrinder that 
>> works without any Xorg/X11 components installed though, I'd be happy 
>> to try it out. It has to support opening and saving (or importing/ 
>> exporting) into ODT and MD formats and must be able to compile source- 
>> only and no docker.
>>
>> Before you ask, since you'll probably find me in another thread asking 
>> about Gentoo related to KDE, I do have Xorg installed on another 
>> machine but it's only for the small sliver of time where I have to 
>> test a desktop program I'm writing for the company I work for. And I 
>> use a separate machine for that. Most of my time is in headless code 
>> though so it's not often I have to boot it up.
> 
> Thank you for sharing! Very interesting. What type of work do you do 
> where you are able to get by with only the shell? You must have a very 
> kind employer! =)

I am a headless C developer (Sometimes C++). I develop code that must 
run on machines that have zero interfaces or local terminal access. I 
think the new term is headless software engineer but that's just a 
little too fancy of a title for me. So I stick with C developer. I code 
for anything from embedded devices (the smallest was a 1" by 1" device 
with 4MB of Flashable EEPROM and 1.25MB of memory on a 548MHz processor) 
all the way up to large data center scale servers. I also have a Data 
center background on top of that so it gives me a leg up when it comes 
to understanding how an application will be used. (most developers only 
learn to develop. They never go further to learn how it's going to be 
implemented and used later which means they can't account for the things 
their program will be demanded to do. I have the advantage of know how 
data centers work so I can code accordingly.)

Since the binary programs have to run headless, I code with shell access 
only. So I'm in a near comparable environment to how the program would 
be run. Limiting myself to only having shell access helps to put me (and 
my team of 11 which also work in shell only) in the mental state of how 
the program will operate. So if we can't do it from shell, then the 
headless binary won't be able to either. In fact, it's a requirement we 
code in shell only. Company law (I may or may not have been responsible 
for it. But I'll plead the 5th if you ask me.)

> 
> As for word processing, the usual suspects are vim, groff, latex and for 
> converting documents back and forth, I think that pandoc is very common.
> 
> But this is all hearsay, so I am sure there are others here in this 
> group who know much more about it than I do.

While I'm sure that Vim an Groff and others are capable of 
converting/using these formats back and forth, WordGrinder is a more 
dedicated purpose application. Trying to use multi-purpose editors just 
adds more complexity not to mention the fact that you have to build 
additional addons and configurations to get the feature set that 
WordGrinder provides out of the box. So that's why it was ultimately chosen.

-- 
Phillip Frabott
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- Adam: Is a void really a void if it returns?
- Jack: No, it's just nullspace at that point.
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