[Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key)

[Heinz Mezera]

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.
>