__/ [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...
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 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.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
4:25pm up 33 days 23:36, 14 users, load average: 0.49, 0.52, 0.31
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