> well it can be done. but to abstract all hardware, not possible. it > will be very complicated and dog slow.
That's relative. Vista is dog-slow, if what I hear is anything to go by. Does that put anyone off? I ought to point you to XYwrite II, the first "word processor" I used on the PC. I think you need to run it on a 4.7 MHz processor to appreciate how fast it was, on modern hardware it would be hard to realise that there is plenty untapped performance behind the scenes. Speed is there to be consumed, the fashion is to (ab)use it for eye-candy and multimedia. Thing is, the decision makers are those with the full wallet and they can manipulate the market. The loser is the innovation that is the daughter of necessity. But that is another subject altogether. ++L
