> I think the way to go as a community would to form a regroupment which would > define standards on how such suite of apps should behave and output, and let > the programmers do their job. Let's have a central brain which coordinates > everyone's effort in a single place, to get the most out of our > anarchy-based development model. The greatest example of such an app is > Gecko (the latest Mozilla 'semi-official' build). It's simply is an > internet-document renderer, yet it'll aimed to be used in things other than > a browser, like HTML E-mail readers, help systems and other things that > way.... Doesn't that sounds familiar? Yes, it does. Microsoft did the same > with IE, Office and Visual Studio. At the center of Microsoft philosophy is > to convince users to use their software. At the basis of ours, it's to allow > users to choose, and modularize the OS and suite of apps environment. > Microsoft actually did good things. It simply never did them for the correct > purpose. >
I would often like to at least narrow the software selection from a long list. I should never have dabbled with the flexible but arcane "mh" mailer or several other mailers. I would like to see the choices that the experts, the Debian developers, make. Do they mostly use exim or smail or ...? What ppp and networking packages do they use? Do they compose html through LaTeX then latex2html, with raw vim, ...? Do they get news with knews or netscape? Do they most often use xfig, xpaint, xv, gimp? Would the Debian developers be amenable to a survey of their expert opinion? -- Jim Burt, NJ9L, Fairfax, Virginia, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mnsinc.com/jameson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (703) 235-5213 ext. 132 (work) "A poor man associating with a rich man will soon be too poor to buy even a pair of breeches." --Chinese Proverb
