Not dead yet...

[David Gaskill]

On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:40:19 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:

>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.


"Dear Mr Customer, 

Thank you for your e-mail  with the Word 97 attachment which I understand 
contains the specification of the work you would like us to carry out for you. 
Unfortunately we only accept orders written in ASCII so I am afraid you are 
going to have to take your business elsewhere" 

Or alternatively: 

"Dear Mr Customer, 

Thank you for your e-mail  with the Word 97 attachment containing the 
specification of the work you would like us to carry out for you.Unfortunately 
we am not able  to respond in Word 97 format so you will find our response in 
ASCII below. The 17 attachments to this e-mail contain the necessary  
drawings, specifications, tables and illustrations and I expect you will be able to 
sort out to which bit of the ASCII text they refer." 

>> 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.

That may well be so but nevertheless they are the industry standards and for 
commercial reasons I must be able to use them .  

>> 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.

I'm not sure what point you are making here. 

What I was trying to say was that I can read anything produced by Outlook 
Express in PMmail, (hey, look - on topic!). Outlook Express  does not embody 
unique formats, (which can become standards) the way that Word and 
Photoshop do. 
>
>>>    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.

OK, thanks  for the explanation. 

It seems to me however that it is a long step from one company considering 
porting a compiler to a platform and that platform becoming sufficiently widely 
used to make it worthwhile for the manufacturers of a major applications to 
produce versions for that platform. 
>
>>>    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.

I understand that Linux already has a healthy share of the server  market but I 
don't see any signs of "the  suits" abandoning Microsoft operating systems. It 
could be that a one-day that Microsoft will lose its dominant position in the way 
that IBM lost out of the clones but Bill shows no signs of making the kind of 
mistakes that IBM did.  


David