NEWS FLASH!

[Larry Ebbitt]

Ralph Cohen wrote:
> 
> >> Problem is that most of the people I know is happy with HTML mail.
> >
> >That's the sort of mindlessness that lead to the dominance of windos.
> 
> Yes, Windows is dominant now, and for the foreseeable future.  HTML
> email will not go away, because MS Outlook, by virtue of the dominance
> of Windows, has created a de facto standard for HTML email.  People on
> this list can argue back and forth about the impossibility and
> irresponsibility of incorporating HTML into email because of a "lack of
> standards" or desirability, but that completely ignores the fact that a
> de facto standard has already been created by MS.  Where the front 90%
> of the trains goes, the rest is sure to follow.

That by no means means that I have to drop my personal standards and
become another MS camp follower.
 
> If denial is your thing, then by all means continue to argue about the
> viability of HTML email and the perceived lack of standards.  While
> you're doing that, the rest of the world will continue to evolve and
> grow and take on new challenges and opportunities and OS/2 will become
> increasingly irrelevant.

It's too late, OS/2 has become irrelevant for me.  I still log on to it,
but only because I must to log into work and to do my finances. GNUCash
is getting better all the time and I hope for a change to the work 
software I must use.  I can't in anyway see that screwing up email with
a bunch of useless eye candy is any sort of evolution. At the moment, I'm
stuck with Netscape for email on Linux, so I see plenty of HTML email, and 
I hate it.  It takes extra time, extra bandwidth, and extra disk space. It
adds nothing of any value to me.  Things are more difficult to read, not
improved. I have no desire to e4volve that way, I want things to be
improved.

> More and more OS/2 users will be forced to migrate to Windows or other
> still evolving OS's just to be able to conduct simple business with
> their customers or exchange letters with their friends.  It's a shame
> that the only support some PMMail/2 users demand from BSW is a promise
> not to officially announce PMMail/2's abandonment, because when you ask
> for nothing, that's generally what you receive.  I've alway believed
> that in order for OS/2 to survive, it needed to keep growing and
> changing.  Maintaining the status quo will do nothing but guarantee
> even fewer users in the future.

The only things I see happening to OS/2 are earnest people trying to import
the worst parts of Linux to it. It has pretty much outlived its usefulness
for me.

-- 
Larry Ebbitt - Linux + OS/2 - Atlanta