[Gllug] Trends in programming

[Walter Stanish]

>> Nomination for the best random modelling tool that people possibly
>> haven't heard of - mscgen:
>>   http://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/
>
> Ooo, that looks nice. Another thing to add to graphviz, metapost and
> xypic in my attempt to never ever have to diagram anything by hand.

I use graphviz too where appropriate, which is almost-never.  When
you need it it's a gem though!  The great thing about it is that you
can use it to do protocol structure diagrams, ala TCP/IP Illustrated.
You can achieve them by using type = record and 'cell1 | cell2 | cell3'
in your output.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of metapost or xypic, though the joy of
LyX 2.0 (still in beta) when set up with XeTeX (for TTF font support)
is guiding me further in to LaTeX these days.  I get the impression
that much of TeX is used near-exclusively by academics of
mathematics and closely related disciplines.

Amusingly, when I showed a colleague mscgen who has a big history
in programming graphics in TeX, he quipped "I could write that
program in half an hour with TeX".

There's a lot of power in there... thanks, Mr. Knuth!

- Walter
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