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[Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete
From: |
Heinz Mezera |
Subject: |
[Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key) |
Date: |
Fri, 20 May 2016 13:56:40 +0200 |
I'll be 72 next week, so that's the time Duncan is looking into the
future.
Without Duncan's in depth and detailed explanations (and patience to do
this again and again) I would have stopped using Pan a long time ago.
Reading his posts is a very well spent time!
Thx 2 Duncan,
Heinz
On Fre, 2016-05-20 at 06:17 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> Lacrocivious Acrophosist posted on Fri, 20 May 2016 04:17:51 +0000 as
> excerpted:
>
> >
> > But there is a center of gravity for the Pan project, and now it
> > moves
> > back to that center, as it has done for decades. That center is
> > Duncan.
> >
> > Without Duncan, Pan would not have survived the lean times that
> > have
> > come more than a few times during Pan's history. Duncan embodies
> > the
> > institutional history of the project, groks the evolution and
> > intricacies of Pan in ways that are unique and probably without
> > peer,
> > and for decades now he has offered quality help to anyone who asks
> > for
> > it.
> >
> > Duncan is Pan's rock against the tides of entropy, and Pan is the
> > better
> > for it. Is it odd to offer such praise to a non-developer? I don't
> > think
> > so. Every project needs glue, and continuity, and Duncan has and
> > continues to provide that, and I for one am very glad he does.
> Thanks. That is powerful, man!
>
> In all humbleness I had thought somewhat the same myself from time
> to
> time. Those months and years without a pan dev do get lonely and
> there
> was a time when I was actually beginning to wonder if it was time to
> uninstall pan and shut off the lights on my way out. But
> fortunately,
> KHaley, and then Petr Kovar and Heinrich Mueller, came along, and we
> even
> got some pretty huge and long on the drawing board features, so pan
> is in
> better shape now than it ever was. And in part, they had something
> to
> come along /to/, because I was still here as a community nucleus
> around
> which a community could re-form. =:^)
>
> But it's hugely different coming from someone else, and the way you
> put
> it was powerful enough I was even tearing up to some extent!
>
> I'll be 50 next year, and while I expect and hope I'll still be
> around
> FLOSS and even pan 20 or 30 years from now, when I'm in my 70s (dare
> I
> even think 80s?)... Imagine some 80-year-old with a walker or
> wheelchair
> in a nursing home running gentoo, and on some mailing list for the
> pimp-
> ass-gopher-client... In 30 years that could be me, still holding
> forth
> on the possibly otherwise long abandoned list for the pimp-ass-
> newsreader, which he's running in some container or VM with an old
> platform as it just doesn't work on wayland 2046 and won't build with
> gcc
> 53!
>
> (Much as today I still run the only slaveryware app I still run on
> my
> computer, the old 1993 DOS edition Master of Orion, in the DOSBox
> DOS
> emulator. And given my rate of usage, if they're still around then,
> I
> may still be using my current $50 TB block account from astroweb,
> too.
> Most of my news usage is actually text, on gmane's list2news
> servers.)
>
> Pimp-Ass Newsreader. It's been a long time since I mentioned what
> pan
> actually originally stood for. Back before the C++ rewrite that was
> introduced as 0.90, I used to insist that the proper form was always
> all-
> caps, PAN, because it was an acronym. But the term pimp-ass isn't
> exactly politically correct these days, and I took the opportunity
> the
> 0.90 rewrite introduction presented to switch my self-consistency to
> the
> lower-case pan, which is after all both easier to type, and the
> actual
> name of the executable.
>
> ... Now /what/ were you saying about pan historian?... =:^)
>
>
> Anyway, I've been thinking. I'm old enough now, reality suggest I'm
> not
> going to learn C/C++ and be a good developer, as I had hoped years
> ago
> when I switched to Linux. And I may or may not eventually switch
> jobs
> and be a Linux sysadmin, professionally as well as literally
> adminning my
> home systems as I've been doing now since the 16-bit DOS and DOS-
> based MS
> Windows era.
>
> But you know, just as the Linux and programs I run are the work of
> literally thousands of people and multiple millions of person-hours,
> both
> developer, and artist and documentor and list regular answering my
> questions and those of others, I really have made a direct difference
> in
> at least hundreds of people's lives, if not thousands (there are
> more
> lurkers and people later finding answers via google than many
> appreciate,
> and indirectly, counting the folks that depend on the systems whose
> admins I have helped, in the MS groups before the turn of the century
> and
> on the Linux lists like the btrfs list I'm on now after, it could be
> tens
> of thousands).
>
> But it's not just me. It's all the devs and artists and documentors
> and
> regulars on the lists, that have helped me and others, just as I too
> have
> done. It's all that, that makes the FLOSS community.
>
> And I may be just one person in that community of hundreds of
> thousands,
> but I'm proud to be able to say I've done my part.
>
> And you know what, no matter where or when I die, and no matter what
> my
> eulogy states if I'm not just some other unidentified dead guy ITRW
> (in
> the real world)...
>
> I know that somewhere, someone online is going to be wondering what
> happened to that Duncan fellow, and missing his help and
> explanations.
>
> And *THAT*, along with pan continuing to live today, is my *REAL*
> eulogy!
>
> Thanks for giving me a glimpse of it, just now. As I said, it's
> powerful
> stuff.
>
> And what it has given me is the best feeling in the world![1]
>
> Now if you will excuse me, there's this liquid on my face I gotta
> deal
> with (for about the forth or fifth time writing this)...
>
> ---
> [1] I remember the first time I caught that high. I was still back
> on
> the MS IE groups, and someone had been on vacation, to come back and
> see
> partial quotes of something I had written, but not my original post,
> as
> it had unfortunately already expired. They asked for a /repost/.
>
> A repost from !me!! Anybody that has been on newsgroups for
> awhile... if
> people are asking for reposts, you've hit it big, and can rightly
> claim
> to be among the elite of the elite among posters from that
> group. And
> they were asking for reposts of !my!! posts!
>
> I was walking on air for a week!
>
> Of course this one's a bit different, particularly given where I took
> it,
> but it's every bit as powerful!
>
> I've some real-world challenges (no I'm not sick, thanks, but moving,
> the
> landlady sold the the property to the city to make way, so the
> renters
> including me gotta move, but at least the city's paying for the
> move)
> coming up, but this will stay with me thru them.
>
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, (continued)
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Maurice, 2016/05/18
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Duncan, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Maurice, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Duncan, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Rhialto, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Zan Lynx, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Rhialto, 2016/05/20
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, walt, 2016/05/19
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Lacrocivious Acrophosist, 2016/05/20
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Duncan, 2016/05/20
- [Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key),
Heinz Mezera <=
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Rhialto, 2016/05/20
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Zan Lynx, 2016/05/20
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Rhialto, 2016/05/21
- Re: [Pan-users] How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key, Maurice, 2016/05/20