Dear All,
You all have to buy my new book RTF Pocket Guide (as well as my first book).
Here, as a tantalizing token of your obligatory desire, is the README file for the code archive that accompanies the book:
Dear Reader,
Congratulations
on your subtle taste and fine discernment in buying my
book, RTF Pocket Guide. I do hope you'll find the book helpful with
whatever RTF-related tasks you have in mind.
This archive contains all the example documents and substantial codeblocks from the book, plus some other interesting goodies.
I've heard it said that Mary McCarthy (an unjustly forgotten author) was
fond of pointing out that if you got nothing else out of War and Peace,
there was always Tolstoy's gourmet recipe for strawberry jam!
(Actually it was in Anna Karenina, chapter two; I don't know whether
the error is McCarthy's, or of the person (Gore Vidal) that I heard
quoting her.) In any case, if you get nothing else out of RTF Pocket
Guide and/or this distribution of files accompanying it, at least you'll
get a decent ASCII chart, and instructions for making an origami CD case.
I have been asked about some of the foreign words and phrases I use in the book. The Latin text is explained in ./outtakes/latin.rtf in this archive.
The phrase "Wenn ein Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen" is a famous musing of Wittgenstein's which means "If a lion knew how to speak, we would not know how to understand".
The German word "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" in section "Hyphenation Point" means "coming to terms with our past" -- prototypically 'our' Nazi past, although it is applied variously, and so a more modern translation might be "truth and reconciliation".
The Sanskrit word "Trimsikavijñaptimatratasiddhih" means "Thirty-canto treatise on consciousness-only" and is the title of a work by the philosopher Vasubandhu, who lived around in the 4th century AD, in the Peshawar province of India. History reports that he and his brother Asanga may have had other brothers, who were ALSO named Asanga and/or Vasubandhu. Kind reader, I could not have made this up.
Similarly, I did not make up these facts about other words that occur in the book:
-- Sean M. Burke
Juneau, Alaska
July 2003
I thought RTF was no longer necessary with the bright shining RSS 2.0!
Re:Google, Do Not Index This and Confuse Good Peop
TorgoX on 2003-08-02T08:03:07
You monkey-spank! My book is about RTF, not RDF!Re:Google, Do Not Index This and Confuse Good Peop
chaoticset on 2003-08-02T14:29:33
Ah, finally! Google's become self-aware and can understand simple commands!Google, Do Not Index This and Confuse Good People!Google! Get me my pr0n! Fetch my modules!
re: Cloning sibling names.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's master work of magical realism features four generations of Buendia familia who all share some combination of the same names (i.e Aureliano, Arcadio, etc). Since the lives of the characters overlap, it can be confusing at times. Yet the Marquez draws the character so finely that amazing that the reader isn't more confused.
