Questions about programs under Linux.

[Anna Schneider]

Okay, I'm going to try and cut and paste a little bit which gets messy.

On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, Yvonne Smith wrote:

> 
>  > 2.  I want to get the Emacs editor.  When I read some info on the 
>  > Emacspeak site, it sounded like there are a couple of different Emacs 
>  > packages available depending on what sorts of things I plan to do with 
>  > Emacs.  Do I have to go find the package I want and download it?  And 
>  > then, if I want to fill out my Emacs package even more, with the Dismal 
>  > Spreadsheet for example, do I have to go download it too?
>  > 
> Ok, emacs I'm better at, since I'm running emacspeak most of the time,
> not speakup. Once you've installed emacs itself, depending on what you
> want to do, you might not have to go any further. If you just want to
> use it as an editor, what comes with it by default will do fine. But
> there are a lot of emacs packages you can download to make the editor do
> different things. Yes, you'll have to download dismal. There's a
> sofisticated calculator called calc. There're two web-browsers native to
> emacs. That's only the tip of the iceberg. 
> All the stuff above you'll have to download and install, but unless you
> need any of those things immediately, you should probably cross that
> bridge when you come to it. Install emacs first, and then try to figure
> out what else you want it to do, and we can probably give you pointers
> to emacs packages. Although you'll probably be best to ask on the
> emacspeak list or even a general emacs list for that kind of information.


Insertiont the first.  I'm guessing that Emacs is going to be my oh way of 
doing lots of stuff.  Writing documents, doing spread sheets, who nows 
what all else.  I don't want the fanciest package around, I'd just get 
confused, but I do want a fairly flexible one.  I won't worry about it 
tons until I do get my computer and install Emacs, but is there an place I 
could look to start reading up on it?

 >  > 3.  Are there ways to open Word 
and Excel programs in Linux? >  
> > Umm, that kind of depends what you mean. If someone sends you a word
> document, there are a couple of programs to turn it into text or
> html. Catdoc, antiword and wordview are the three that spring to mind
> off the top of my head.
> 
> excel spreadsheets are a bit more of a problem. I'm pretty sure I saw
> something to turn them into html or something like that on the wordview
> page, but I'd have to go do some more research, since I haven't really
> looked in a while.

Okay, do these programs to open/convert Word documents come with 
distributions generally speaking, or will I have to go dig them up 
somewhere.

>  > 5.  What is the most recent version of Lynx?  Is it considered to be 
>  > equivalent to Internet Explorer 4.0 or better?   This matters quite a bit 
>  > actually.  If I need another web browser in addition to Lynx, do any exist 
>  > for Linux?
>  > 
> Umm web browsers under linux for console users are a bit problematic. I
> don't think there's anything we can use under linux that I'd consider
> equivalent to ie4 or above. The things that are impossible for us under
> linux that you're likely to encounter are javascriptand activex.
> 
> Javascript would be useable if we could use x-windows, but we
> can't. Activex will probably never be useable, since it's a microsoft
> scripting language. I don't know if this answers your question. Again,
> you'll need to be a bit more specific about what you'll want to do.
Well, here's the thing.  I've just become a Mary Kay consultant, and if 
you go to the Mary Kay web sit, (www.marykay.com) there is a section 
called Intouch all one word, and this section has information under it for 
consultants, but I can't get in with lynx.  This is a problem.  Material 
such as an online version of the product guide are there.  In fact, I find 
several parts of Mary Ky's web site to be not easily lynx accessible.  I'm 
not sure why.  Maybe someone on this list could look and tell me.



> 
>  > 6.  And last I hope and this is just a point of clarification, when you 
>  > all talk about telnetting and ftyping and all that, you are doing from 
>  > your machines right?  Do you have to dial in first to do those things from 
>  > your machine or how does that work?
>  > 
> Telnet and ftp are generally used to connect from one machine to
> another. Almost certainly you'll want to be connected to the internet,
> unless you've got a network at home, and need to talk to other machines
> on your own network.
> 
> 
But see this is where I'm confused.  I've worked off of machines on a 
network with a couple different operating systems and you could ftp and 
telnet between some of those, and I've worked off of my old DOS computer 
at home where I have to dial up, but I haven't worked off of a linux 
machine that isn't hooked into a network.  That's why I'm confused.  If 
I'm not on a network but I have a Linux machine, do FTP and telnet come 
into play at all and if so how?

And thank you.  The answers were quite helpful.

Anna