8/2     I work at a company where we do all our engineering work on unix.
        But most of our documentation is done on MS Word. Each of us writes
        our own docs and someone combines everything in the end resulting
        in 600 pages of unreadable crap. I'm looking for a unix-based
        documentation tool that stores individual parts of a document
        in some sort of text format (like XML) and that lets multiple
	...

9/16    In emacs how do you say "I want to kill all of the buffers that end
        with hello.log", in cases where you have multiple */hello.log files?
        \_ Here's a way with keyboard macros that takes no thought:
           C-x C-b C-x C-o C-x ( C-s .log RET d C-x ) C-u 100 C-x e x
        \_ Here's a way with lisp programming which forced me to whip out
           some documentation:
	...

8/30    Ok this is pretty basic but... is there a way to "escape" text to
        avoid it being substituted by C preprocessor macro expansion?
        \_ Wouldn't that functionality make C preprocessing as powerful as
           lisp's quasiquote/escape? -- ilyas
           \_ Squish!  Isn't it illegal to talk about lisp on the motd?!
        \_ In general no.
	...

8/18    Doesn't math.h define min() and max() functions?  What should I include
        to get them?  I'd rather not do the (a < b) ? a : b thing.  Thx
        \_ No.  Many programmers define it as a new macro.  Don't know what
           gcc people do, offhand.
        \_ OS X has fmin(3)/fmax(3) which conform to ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E).
           Linux might have these too.
	...

7/27    Does the Mozilla mail client have any kind of macro language?
        Currently I use emacs for mail since I really like being able
        to customize it and write macros.  Thanks.
        \_ Yeah, combining macros with email is great.
        \_ OUTLOOK IS THE STANDARD!  USE VIRUS!
	...

7/4     Is there something like a macro in Perl?  Couldn't find any in
        the Camel book.
        \_ If you truly need macros in Perl, you probably want AUTOLOAD.
           Of course, if you truly need macros, Perl is the wrong language for
           what you are doing.  -- ilyas
        \_ I don't know perl, but don't almost all interpreted languages have
	...

6/28    is it useful/essential to learn Latex? I'm pretty happy with MS Word
        and Powerpoint but occassionally people make fun of me and I kind of
        feel left out and wanna learn Latex, but I'm not sure if it's
        worthwhile to spend the time learning it. thx.
        \_ I don't think I've ever found it useful, and I know very very few
           people in industry that have any use for it.  Perhaps it's different
	...

3/3     /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lX11
        What is wrong? I've included /usr/X11R6/lib and still no luck...
        \_ if you included the actual command line and OS details, maybe
           someone could give a more helpful response.
        gcc -nostdlib `./prefix-args -Xlinker  -R/usr/X11R6/lib -z nocombreloc -\
L/usr/X11R6/lib` -o temacs pre-crt0.o /usr/lib/crt1.o /usr/lib/crti.o dispnew.o\
	...

12/14   Is there a way in Excel to do
            y=0
            for n=1:100
              y=y+x^n
            end
        where x is the value in a particular box, say E2.  Obviously, I can do
	...

12/4    Is there a way to do a c/c++ log macro/function so that in the log
        message it will automatically output the filename/function name
        or something of that sort?
        \_ One (bad) attempt, just to give you an idea:
        #define LOGMSG logMsg(__FILE__, __LINE__,
        int logMsg(char *fname, int line, char *msgfmt, ...) {
	...

6/17    Anyone have any experience with StarOffice 6?  I am sick to death
        both of MSOffice, and of StarOffice 5.2 munging macros and formatting.
        Neither koffice nor OpenOffice do a better job.  And yes, I do
        occasionally need to work on word docs.  -John
        \_ obED!
        \_ soffice 6 sucks on Linux/*BSD/Solaris. It is slow, unresponsive,
	...

4/19    What's the closest thing Scheme has to a good standard library and a
        standard interpreter?
        \_ obUsePerl
           \_ Perl is a slow, broken mess.
           \_ there's a reason I like Scheme, and that reason is exactly why
              I can't stand Perl.
	...