On 2006-01-13, Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> posted something concerning:
> __/ [Sinister Midget] on Friday 13 January 2006 16:28 \__
>
>> On 2006-01-13, Edwards <edwards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> posted
>> something concerning:
>>> On 2006-01-13, Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> Microsoft want to replace PDF, [...]
>>>
>>> Hey, if Microsoft wants to release some kind of dvidoc, or a ps2doc to
>>> be included in the ghostscript package, I'll be happy to give it a
>>> shot.
>>>
>>> But it'll have to work _really_ well for me to stick with it. ;)
>>> (Somewhat less importantly, I already get dvips and ps2pdf for free;
>>> while I wouldn't expect that of Microsoft's offerings, they will,
>>> again, need to be pretty competitively priced relative to their
>>> quality.)
>>
>> Since they kill off any real competition, and they've already killed
>> off a good little bit of previous things, that means they can continue
>> charging whatever they think they can soak out of the Bilges and
>> DooFu$es of the world. They'll pay it. In their world "competitively
>> priced" doesn't work due to lack of competitors.
>
> Thanks for pointing that out as I was going to do so myself. What worries
> me most is a /format/ which is controlled by a /platform/ vendor. Any tool
> that is controlled by a vendor of its dependencies in fact...
The world is learning that closed formats are stupid and counter-
productive. I don't expect vendor lockin to work very well in the
future. That's not to say there won't be some casualties on the road as
things progress, like people or companies being threatened and falling
for it. But those will only serve to hasten the transition away from
the lockin.
> Earlier today the world was informed that Microsoft's Media Player for the
> Mac has come to an end, only one month after the same happened to Internet
> Exploder. If it were not for Firefox (or the quickly-striding Safari),
> what would this have implies to Mac users in a world where (hypothetical-
> ly) all sites were built and tested under IE?
I didn't know they made a media player for Mac. Neither did the wife,
who's been using a Mac for 5+ years. We agree we're going to miss it.
Their browser is even crappier on Mac. The wife only has 2 sites that
she must use IE to navigate. At least, she needs it for the links they
advertise. On one, it does what it should. On the other, it calls for
version 5.0 or newer. She has newer. And it refuses to work. She
bitched to/at the people running the site and they came up with an
alternative (still leaving the old one for the Wintards to drool at)
that wasn't screwed-up by Front Page. That one works fine with Safari,
Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and some other browser she tried that has a
name I don't recall. I'd wager the one that works OK with her Mac
version of IE also has alternative links for people using real
browsers. but she never bothered to check since she had a way into it
already.
What good is a browser that won't even work despite meeting the
criteria of the crapware it was designed to work with?
> I can recall being vexed when Adode did not release Acrobat Reader 6 for
> Linux. Essentially, new elements such as embedded comments could not be
> read under Linux. Adobe /sort of/ made up for it when they released ver-
> sion 7. This time around, it didn't involve ugly Motif widgets either. Op-
> en formats are the safest choice, always.
I'm ambivalent wrt Adobe. I try to avoid using them as much as
possible. But I'm not totally against using them when I must. I prefer
gv, or xpdf when that doesn't work well. I like them partially because
it's easier to typetheir names, they're always available on everything
I use, they're lighter and faster, etc, etc.
--
A fool and his money are soon using Windows.
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