From Newsgroup: gnu.emacs.help
Technically neglible knowledge and understand.
I'm a user as it serves Trade welding, engineering and science work.
I use flat text wherever possible. Emacs. With everything good
including its bookmarks, its abbreviation expansions (I didn't just
type
"Thermo-Mechanically Controlled-Processed High-Strength Low-Alloy"
in describing the steel!)
I'll just spin a calculation for a 1016x305x584UB ("Universal Beam")... (ma2nd-z-plt-ibeam-prettyprint 314.0e-3 1056.0e-3 36.0e-3 64.0e-3)
"I-H : b=0.314 h=1.056 t_w=0.036 t_f=0.064 : I=1.229913e-02 Z=2.329381e-02"
"I is the 2nd moment of area; "Z" is the section modulus. Beam
intrinsic geometric properties.
My beam spans 20 metres and is centrally loaded...
(/
(beam-fmax-ibeam-simple-cload 314.0e-3 1056.0e-3 36.0e-3 64.0e-3 20 275e6) ;; 1281159.3955555558 ;; N
9.81 1e3) ;; 130.59728802808928
It will theoretical according to Euler-Bernoulli beam calculation take
130 Tonnes force of concentrated central load at its midspan, 10m from
each end of its 20m span.
I do my technical webpages in HTML as if flat text. I have some
functions to set-up a document with headers and footers, insert
images, links, etc. to expedite typing at the keyboard.
"LaTeX" is have used for 25 years.
It's been a success.
No two ways about that.
No matter the critical analysis of markup, typesetting and all that
good stuff.
I have stayed sane (?!) producing big documents, where the same
observation would not be made for others using "user-friendly software applications".
The constancy of the fundamental methods means years can go by then a
new need can have you pick up where you left off doing your next task.
I appeal to you to think of the pragmatic as I present it as this "metal-basher".
My Doctoral thesis was in typeset PDF version 22 years ago - all 240
pages.
A few years later I blanked the "space box" code for where I glued
photos and un-commented-out the image typeset instructions whose code
was already known at time of writing and re-ran the LaTeX typesetter.
The result was accepted as authentic and went to the archive as a PDF
with all images incorporated
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/4617
Ten years later I did some more research, this time in a more
engineering discipline
http://www.weldsmith.co.uk/big_files/thesis_fatgproj_rev111029/fatigue_perform_Tjoint.pdf
Again - systematic working; hard work but under smooth control.
By the way - back to flat text - in that work I had to set the fatigue
testing machine. The console offered only the cycle-rate (eg. 10
cycles per second the machine maximum), the minimum force and the
maximum force. The testing machine couldn't "see" the sample. All it
new was when the sample broke (all force disappeared) so it stops and
holds the number of cycles at which that event happened (typically
hundreds of thousands to millions).
So I had to know the sample size so convert force to stress; know what
stress that should be for a short harsh or longer more typical service
stress test, etc. Know that my test should fit into the time before
the next machine booking - so tweak the stress to get information
needed which was achievable in the time.
Cascades of calculations.
Likely when fraught, tired, and possibly near building locking-up
time, etc.
So - suite of functions in elisp. As ever - grew from the bottom up,
until gathered at the "consumer item" level with a grand invoke-all-in-a-cascade function. Which - as ever - pretty-prints its
inputs with labels so a person cross-eyed with tiredness gets to
survey all, made easy for the human.
(there's a pretty-print of the inputs to the beam calculation earlier,
as a simple but representative example. Simplicity is virtue here)
Plus those two crucial numbers, the minimum force and maximum force
you need to key-in at the testing machine's console.
Again, I'm saying - yes pursue the finer points of what the computing
and information technology way ahead might be - but - do remember how well-serving are these "sub-optimal" methods which are never-the-less
extremely rational and effective ways of working.
They will get the best out of the human, doing whatever it is that
their endeavour is.
So I want to encourage you.
Both to go on, and to appreciate how much these existing computational
tools you work with are valuable to those of us in our abstruse specialisations.
With best wishes,
Rich Smith
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