5 ms·
Mark Pilgrim on The Setup
- GHFigs 17y agoThis one is well worth reading. He doesn't just list his kit, he has quite a bit to say on writing and some very interesting ideas about a "dream setup".
- jrockway 17y agoThis may become a factor in choosing a publisher for future books: the ability to avoid Microsoft Word altogether. I can relate; writing a book in Word (or OOWriter) is an absolute nightmare. Never again. (I am also having trouble imagining working on a computer while sitting in a Poang armchair. Your body is not at the right angle to look at something in front of you, really.)
- abecedarius 17y agoEric Drexler is said to have hung a monitor from his ceiling so he could read it reclining. Back in the CRT days. (I don't remember the source.)
- abecedarius 17y ago(I always thought of that as the CRT of Damocles.)
- tomjen2 17y agoYou don't have too - almost nobody remembers this, but Microsofts entire office suite can be fully used by a COM client. Granted the COM API is one ugly son of a bitch, but the Python implementation isn't nearly as bad. So my suggestion would be to write the book in a format that you like and then write a quick Python program that uses the COM API of MS Word to compile it into a .doc which you can then send to the publisher.
- dylanz 17y agoNot even near being a designer, but the font on that post is awesome.
- mikedouglas 17y agoMuseo Sans. Looks like some of the weights are free-as-in-beer, too. http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/exljbris/museo-sans/ http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/exljbris/museo-sans/
- RK 17y agoI like the Poäng chair from IKEA, but I don't know how anyone can sit in it all day long at a desk. It's a lounge chair.
- deepakjois 17y agoMark posted a pic of his setup on Twitter : http://wearehugh.com/public/2010/01/the-setup.jpg http://wearehugh.com/public/2010/01/the-setup.jpg
- kqr2 17y agoMaybe he has one of those ergonomic keyboard trays which would allow him to work at that angle. http://www.ergodirectusa.com/Keyboard-Trays-s/2.htm http://www.ergodirectusa.com/Keyboard-Trays-s/2.htm
- MarkPilgrim 17y agoAnd I don't know how anyone can sit in a desk chair all day long. Here's how it works: wireless mouse on a table next to me. Keyboard on my lap (with the wire plugged into a front-side USB port). Feet up on the matching Poang footstool. Monitors about six feet away from me on a regular desk. Appropriate text sizes in Emacs and terminal, and appropriate zoom levels in Chromium. (Chromium remembers per-site zoom levels automatically.)
- gotmarko 17y agoI'd love to see a photo of Mark in setting at his desk working from the chair in front of those monitors.
- garnet7 17y agoHe writes in raw HTML? Hm.
- jmckib 17y agoCould you (or someone else) possibly expand on that? Is writing in raw HTML generally discouraged? I am totally ignorant in this area, but I am curious about it since I admire Mark's formatting and he seems to get a lot done.
- telemachos 17y agoI can't speak for the person you're commenting on - that is, I have no idea what the 'Hm' meant. Also, I don't think it's generally discouraged. Lots of people write raw HTML (in some contexts). But I certainly wouldn't want to write an entire book in HTML - it forces you to type a lot of brackets and tags. I'm sure your editor could take a lot of work off your shoulders, but even at that you end up typing a ton of macros (I would think). In any case, it seems easier to me to type the bulk of it in Markdown (or the like) and only occasionally drop down to raw HTML. To each, his or her own though.
- doty 17y agoMight be a nice step up from docbook, though.
- tomjen2 17y agoIt depends on how much formatting he does, but HTML isn't exactly known for its brevity. Imagine each time you want a new paragraph you have to write <p>ee</p> - sure you _can_ but it gets annoying rather quickly.
- garnet7 17y agoFor longer documents, I haven't written in raw html for quite some time. I use Markdown instead, and had assumed that most everyone (except maybe some web designers) uses some form of prettier markup for writing their longer content-heavy documents; either Markdown, reST, or maybe MoinMoin-style wiki markup. Those seem to be the big three (with reST only making it into that group by virtue of being used for the official Python docs, and thus also for many Python-related projects).
- mstevens 17y agoThe bit that has surprised and interested me with usesthis.com is how few people they've talked to use Linux, and how many people use OS X. I mean, I knew OS X was big in the geek market, I just didn't quite realise it was this popular.