Not dead yet...

[Steve Lamb]

Thursday, August 26, 1999, 12:16:18 PM, David wrote:
> I am sure you are right but the fact is that many people send me information
> in Word 97 format and I have got to be able to read it. This says nothing
> about the quality of Word as a word processor it just a commercial
> necessity. (I liked Describe ...)

    There are Word readers for Linux.  The industry standard for electronic
text is ASCII.  Personally I have and will refuse anything outside that
format.

> Of course it may be that Photoshop and Director will be succeeded as
> industry standards by bigger and better applications in the fullness of time
> but right now they are the industry standards and, so far as I am aware,
> they will only run on Windows and Macintosh.

    The point I was making was that they are industry standards only because
people don't look elsewhere.

> I don't think the two things are connected; I need Word because I must be
> able to read and manipulate files written in this format. I don't need
> Outlook Express because I can read e-mails sent by users of that application
> in PMmail.

    Hmmm, mmmm...  But you don't get all the cutsey features that go along
with it.  And let's not forget the people who send in HTML which Lookout
happily parses.

>>    Linux.  Borland is porting Delphi to it with an eye of porting their C++
>>platform to it as well.

> I'm afraid this is a little over my head; does this mean that the applications we 
> have been discussing will become available on this platform? 

    When a company like Borland is considering porting its flagship compiler
to Linux it means that there is an industry shift that is unprecedented.
Delphi, TMK, has never been ported to anything else.

>>    Which ignores the other route to the desktop, through the servers.  ;)

> Sorry, but you will have to explain this to me. 

    By proving that Linux is good for servers it gets it into the minds of
corporate suits.  Get it in the minds there and they look at it.  They look at
it and things start happening.  That is how Microsoft got to where it was and
how the clones toppled IBM.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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