On 26 Dec 00 at 22:37, owner-arachne-digest@arachne wrote:
>Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 13:44:52 -0500
>From: Roger Turk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Windows-only printers (Was: Would th
>
>M$, in bundling Word (and other programs) with Winbloze, destroyed the
>WordPerfect user base. Why would a person buy a word processing program when
>one comes "free" with the computer? Then why would a person not upgrade to
>the same program when upgrades came along --- after all, they were now
>accoustomed to that program?
Roger,
I think it was not only the bundling with WINDOWS. Have you ever seen
what WP did with East European codepage support and how they
grafically printed individual diacritical letters on line printers?
Codepages where NOT a MS, but a PC standard. And it was WordPerfect
who first bloated the document sizes due to their complicated file
structure: a Czech text in WP 5 was 5-10 times larger than a
formatted document in MS Word 5 (with codepage support) - both
programmes offering almost equal features.
I can work with a German version of MS Word for DOS until today
because MS that time provided a utility that helps you to
compile your own printer drivers (with a good printer manual).
So my only fear is that EPSON or HP may some day abandon backward
compatibility concerning their escape code sequences.
>M$ bought Fox Software, creator of the fast, dBase compatible
>database program, FoxPro, that could run on DOS and Winbloz, and
>then put it out to pasture leaving Access as the "defacto" database
>standard.
But they did not buy millions of applications written in the dBase
programming language, mostly for database or account applications.
They are going to work for ever on any small old computer. So there
is very few they can do about this. Except one thing: go to into our
schools, offer them Pentium for free and ensure that our children do
not learn anything else but WINDOWS.- Almost "religiously", isn't it?
Regards
Christof Lange
_______________________________________________
Christof Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic
phone: (+420-2) 22 78 18 00 / 22 78 20 02, telefax: 22 78 18 01
http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
