>From: Sean Michael Mead <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Faustus von Goethe wrote:
> > .....  Nobody *really* wants a cross
> > platform solution because a cross platform solution is not optimized - 
>it is
> > "dumbed down".
> >
>
>That's just plain wrong.  Organizations of any significant size widely 
>favor
>cross-platform solutions, because it lowers their costs dramatically in
>.......
>systems rather than having incompatibility failures).  That is why there 
>has
>been an explosion of use in HTML, XML, Tcl/Tk, etc.

You either have the terms confused or you are not familiar with the 
distinction between a "cross platform solution" and a "platform neutral 
solution".  There is a subtle but very important distinction between the 
terms "cross-platform solution" and "platform neutral solution".  A cross 
platform solution is one in which the OS itself must be programmed to 
contribute to the "neutrality" of the solution.  Unix and "C" when they were 
created were supposed to be the final solution in cross-platform technology. 
  You can see this did not work.  "Native" Java and the whole idea of 
"thin-client" pcs and "network" pcs were the most recent resurgence of this 
idea - also dismal failures in that regard.  It falls apart because for a 
full-featured programming environment you need to define system calls, and 
different OS's have different requirements for these - many of them based on 
system architecture (hardware) choices rather than software.

A "platform neutral" solution (like html) is one that relies on a common 
interface that runs as a utility on multiple different types of machines.  
The command set is limited by what the common interface is programmed to 
allow.  System calls (and hence program functionality) are generally 
extremely limited.

Faust
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