Re: OT: Microsoft takes on history

[Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> writes:

> In the end, this really doesn't make much difference. How long does the
> average document live? 

I don't know about the "average" document, but I have some that are 5
years old and still being edited. _Not_ in Word :). Some are in LaTeX,
some in FrameMaker. I prefer LaTeX.

> A few days? A few months? How much work is it to totally recreate
> the document if suddenly your favorite word processor disappeared
> from the face of the earth? 

About 1 man year; it's a large and dense document.

> Don't most word processors provide some means of importing and
> exporting file formats other than their own? (I know the copy of
> MS-Word I have here seems to be able to do that...)

Yes, but it's never adequate. If you export RTF from Word, and import
it into FrameMaker, you get the bold fonts and stuff, but you totally
lose the meta-format of headers, paragraph styles, etc. Well, not
_totally_, but you lose enough that I don't try to do it anymore.

> In other words, this seems to be a tempest in a teapot. 

nope. It's a real problem.

So far, the only really long-lived document format is flat ASCII, like
the Internet RFCs.

> Its a little like insisting that all microprocessors execute the
> same instruction set so that all software would be totally portable
> - its an unreasonable restriction on innovation and it doesn't
> really buy you anything.

Um, when is the last time you ran a DOS window on a Windows PC? And
then ran the latest wizzy graphics game on the _same_ PC? you are
benefitting from exactly that requirement!

> > And I am just as sure that once a new company overtakes Microsoft,
> everyone > will be pontificating that the new company will never
> lose its #1 spot. :)
> >
> And we'll all be complaining about what a bunch of unfair bastards they are
> for having done it the way they did and thus gained a total, unbreakable
> monopoly on the market. 

Possibly.

> It won't matter if they did it all Open Source and public file
> formats. 

Actually, I think it will matter. Since the only proven way to make
money from Open Source is to offer good service that the customers
actually want, it will matter a lot.

> If someone becomes a dominant player, there will be a bunch of us
> hating them for it. (Lets come back here in ten years when the full
> impact of open source is apparent & see if there isn't a large
> contingent out there arguing in favor of totally proprietary, closed
> systems...:-)

It will be an interesting experiment. I wonder if comp.lang.ada will
be around in 2012?

-- 
-- Stephe