Uh, yeah, you obviously haven't thought this through. Why would you be generating a "Word file" if the intent is not to have Word do the work at some point? What do you think people are trying to do -- open the DOC file in hex editor and stare at the gibberish?
In nearly 20 years of Windows programming, I have come across _one_ Windows application that is designed for multi-threaded operation besides those that I've written entirely on my own.
Commercial apps like Ms Office, Photoshop, etc nearly all use some multithreading.
Anyway, I'll let you guys babber on about Apple's great mult-threading, while I wait for the Finder to take a siesta everytime there's some sort of network operation. Whatever.
Personally, I've always had a soft spot for the final Windows 3.1 release of Office. Not that I'd ever use either Windows 3.1 or Microsoft Office for Windows 3.1 ever again, but at the time, it felt like a stable, mature product.
Office 4.2 -- which was the first real integrated version of office, and the last before it "jumped the shark" and got loaded up with wizards and cartoon characters. The 32-bit version (Office/NT) was especially good.
I dunno, I figure if Microsoft somehow breaks IE & Word on the same box, it will be about 15 minutes before you can go to their office building and buy their doorknobs the scrap value.
Besides, weren't you arguing about standards in the other post? I think you'd agree with me here and blame Word if it couldn't render W3C-standard HTML properly rather than advocating a proprietary undocumetned binary format.
Which is great until you want to select something in a SELECT element, and then you realize that the W3C way only has about 50% of the universal API and is a lot more code than the document.forms way. These niggling details are exactly why the form API support is never going to be dropped from browsers, and eventually will be standardized in one way or another.
It's basically the same argumetn as XmlHttpRequest -- people build on browsers, not specs. You think Google checked with W3C before they started using it? Truth is nbody cares if it is codifies it or not, although it's nice if the committe would get off their asses and document existing practice now-and-again.
Don't expect it to remain in the future.
Maybe if browsers ever drop a widely used feature, I might consider that.
I think you missed his point. No matter the file format, MS Word is not driving corporations to upgrade their PCs. It's all that other stuff (OS, anti-virus, apps written in Java, etc).
If you add another $1000 for a kick-ass PC, you still only spend $2.5M.
I'm sure that made a successful business case argument!!
I think if you could get away with this tact, it's on the basis that you can lengthen replacement cycles. Historically, though, that has never really paid off. Old expensive PCs don't perform as nicely as new cheap ones do.
If I had $2500/PC/Year, I would seriously consider doing annual replacements rather than ueber god boxes. Or more rationally, I'd take that extra $1000/PC and spend it on software or storage or somewhere else in the IT budget that needs it.
And I do DTP, more demanding than the average office paper work.
Actually, in my experience, MS Office out-bloated QuarkXPress about 10 years ago. DTP hasn't been a overly demanding application in some time -- because the programs are designed to deal with large images it tends to work better on lower memory machines than general PowerPoint stuff seems to. (No offense intended to the DTP users asking their boss for a G5.)
I'm sick of this pro-Micro$hit crap. Every Slashdotter knows that IBM Lotus Notes is the best mail client ever made, and therefore IBM dominates all software. You got a problem with IBM? Try to argue with the awesome functionality of Lotus Notes, and enjoy the smackdown, bitches.
Unlike Nutscrape Layers, the form.* API is universally supported by every browser made that even pretended to have Javascript support. I'm not talking about Javascript HTML APIs -- I'm talking about the stuff that everyone uses to manipulate form values that is only 50% standardized. And let's not even get into window.* -- it's only the proprietary-loving assholes who ever use that
Blah blah, but it doesn't explain how trying to generate a binary OC file using 3rd party software is any better than using a well-supported interchange format like HTML.
Especially when we don't know what that "worst" might be.
We do know what "Worst" is. "Worst" is when your so-called Word file fails to open in Word.
I fully expect the competition to do the same now that dual-CPU is becoming mainstream in the intel world, as well as in the Apple one...
Meanwhile, back in non-fanboy reality, most major Windows programs were multithreaded for backgroaund tasks 10 years ago -- when Mac users were jiggering their memory allocations. Microsoft made a big deal about threaded programming for OS/2 back in 1987, which is the same year that Apple finally added colors to their OS. Microsoft shipped a SMP OS in 1993, while Apple didn't get around to it until 2001. In short, I don't belive the competition is behind Apple at all on this point.
Primarily software -- if you want drivers optimized for Half-Life, get the consumer card. For drivers certified for 3D apps, get the pro card. It might seem like a rip-off on the surface, but the reality is that both pros and consumers are subsidizing each other and they are both getting cheaper parts as a result.
Anyway, the 3D software is usually priced at the point that the hardware isn't a major consideration anyway. You can get pack-in pro 3D cards for basically nothing if you buy the right Dell workstation.
> Then again, the W3C loves to standardize everything, so I suppose it shouldn't come as any real surprise
Actually it's a pleasant surprise to me, as the W3C has historically focused on hypertext documents and has done almost nothing to improve the state of the art of web applications.
We're talking about a feature introduced in 1999 that has almost universal support already. Maybe they can even get around to completing standardization of the form.* API (from Netscape 2.0) one of these days!
Trying to do what you suggest would create a support nightmare, especially across programs other than Office.
You know if other word processors can't figure out how to open an HTML file named *.DOC, they're basically broken. It's not possible to even try to open a DOC file without sniffing the magic bits (because a ton of them are actually RTF).
And it's funny to talk about "support nightmares" when you're bitching that their solution is basically hosed. Feeding HTML4/CSS1 to Word/Excel is by far the most superior way that I've found to create simple "DOC" or "XLS" files from a web application. Let MS do the work so you don't have to.
I remember hearing that ActiveX would only allow privileged operations if the code was digitally signed and verified as trustworthy, and hence would be as safe as Java
This is actually true. A digitally-signed Java Applet can do everything a digitally-signed ActiveX applet can do. If you think Java can't delete your hard drive or install spyware, you're just wrong -- it can and it does.
Not to mention that the Sun Java plugin has also had a pretty lousy record of security issues that almost rivals the problems with ActiveX.
Odd problem, because Word generally opens simple HTML documents directly just fine without much formatting loss. Maybe they are being too tricky and actually trying to generate a DOC instead of just sending HTML with the Word MIME type.
And neither is the HTML editing component which was apparently used.
Pointing fingers at IE is sometimes appropriate, but in this case, this sort of web application is simply impossible without using IE-originated extentions.
I mean an office system also works fine with an integrated Intel video card, but I can think of plenty of things, and not just games, that benefit or mandidate a better one.
I'm curious what. Intel video works fine for most sorts of 2D graphics or video applications (photoshop, etc), and for professional 3D, you want a professional card. I guess what I'm getting at is that there's very little need for a consumer Nvidia/ATI card in a business system other than for games.
If we are talking about the engine, then it would cause a lot of issues for the system, since a lot of the system actually seems to make use of that engine.
Right, so it's very likely they will not remove the "engine".
More likely they just made a copy of IE7 and called it "Windows Web Browsing Services" or something and it's just as integrated as always.
OSI was a more open standard. OSI was developed by an international consortium, while TCP/IP was a loosely documented by informal RFCs traded between US Govt researchers.
I think the OSI/IP comparison is apt... ODF is more "official", but OpenXML has the vendor support.
Except Alienware is already on the "standard platform" -- anyone can buy the AMD/Intel/NV/ATI parts. Rather than Old Saturn, AW is more along the lines of a custom car tuner or conversion van company that buys bodies from GM.
Retail sales for Windows are almost irrelvant compared to OEM sales. I don't see Microsoft making any special modifications for a vendor that is not a Windows OEM.
> 5% of the market a lot to ignore?
More like 2%, and they don't ignore it, they make software for it. (Including VirtualPC, which is likely more profitable per copy than a OEM Windows license).
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Uh, yeah, you obviously haven't thought this through. Why would you be generating a "Word file" if the intent is not to have Word do the work at some point? What do you think people are trying to do -- open the DOC file in hex editor and stare at the gibberish?
In nearly 20 years of Windows programming, I have come across _one_ Windows application that is designed for multi-threaded operation besides those that I've written entirely on my own.
Commercial apps like Ms Office, Photoshop, etc nearly all use some multithreading.
Anyway, I'll let you guys babber on about Apple's great mult-threading, while I wait for the Finder to take a siesta everytime there's some sort of network operation. Whatever.
Personally, I've always had a soft spot for the final Windows 3.1 release of Office. Not that I'd ever use either Windows 3.1 or Microsoft Office for Windows 3.1 ever again, but at the time, it felt like a stable, mature product.
Office 4.2 -- which was the first real integrated version of office, and the last before it "jumped the shark" and got loaded up with wizards and cartoon characters. The 32-bit version (Office/NT) was especially good.
I dunno, I figure if Microsoft somehow breaks IE & Word on the same box, it will be about 15 minutes before you can go to their office building and buy their doorknobs the scrap value.
Besides, weren't you arguing about standards in the other post? I think you'd agree with me here and blame Word if it couldn't render W3C-standard HTML properly rather than advocating a proprietary undocumetned binary format.
Which is great until you want to select something in a SELECT element, and then you realize that the W3C way only has about 50% of the universal API and is a lot more code than the document.forms way. These niggling details are exactly why the form API support is never going to be dropped from browsers, and eventually will be standardized in one way or another.
It's basically the same argumetn as XmlHttpRequest -- people build on browsers, not specs. You think Google checked with W3C before they started using it? Truth is nbody cares if it is codifies it or not, although it's nice if the committe would get off their asses and document existing practice now-and-again.
Don't expect it to remain in the future.
Maybe if browsers ever drop a widely used feature, I might consider that.
I think you missed his point. No matter the file format, MS Word is not driving corporations to upgrade their PCs. It's all that other stuff (OS, anti-virus, apps written in Java, etc).
If you add another $1000 for a kick-ass PC, you still only spend $2.5M.
I'm sure that made a successful business case argument!!
I think if you could get away with this tact, it's on the basis that you can lengthen replacement cycles. Historically, though, that has never really paid off. Old expensive PCs don't perform as nicely as new cheap ones do.
If I had $2500/PC/Year, I would seriously consider doing annual replacements rather than ueber god boxes. Or more rationally, I'd take that extra $1000/PC and spend it on software or storage or somewhere else in the IT budget that needs it.
And I do DTP, more demanding than the average office paper work.
Actually, in my experience, MS Office out-bloated QuarkXPress about 10 years ago. DTP hasn't been a overly demanding application in some time -- because the programs are designed to deal with large images it tends to work better on lower memory machines than general PowerPoint stuff seems to. (No offense intended to the DTP users asking their boss for a G5.)
Every time someone comes up with "most apps are useless at multi-processing", it's always a windows app.
I say either name one, or STFU fruitboy.
Honestly, you're going to have to dig down to the level of obscure VisualBasic vertical apps that aren't even available on Macs.
I'm sick of this pro-Micro$hit crap. Every Slashdotter knows that IBM Lotus Notes is the best mail client ever made, and therefore IBM dominates all software. You got a problem with IBM? Try to argue with the awesome functionality of Lotus Notes, and enjoy the smackdown, bitches.
Unlike Nutscrape Layers, the form.* API is universally supported by every browser made that even pretended to have Javascript support. I'm not talking about Javascript HTML APIs -- I'm talking about the stuff that everyone uses to manipulate form values that is only 50% standardized. And let's not even get into window.* -- it's only the proprietary-loving assholes who ever use that
.sig :)
And Blink has been standardized. See
Blah blah, but it doesn't explain how trying to generate a binary OC file using 3rd party software is any better than using a well-supported interchange format like HTML.
Especially when we don't know what that "worst" might be.
We do know what "Worst" is. "Worst" is when your so-called Word file fails to open in Word.
I fully expect the competition to do the same now that dual-CPU is becoming mainstream in the intel world, as well as in the Apple one...
Meanwhile, back in non-fanboy reality, most major Windows programs were multithreaded for backgroaund tasks 10 years ago -- when Mac users were jiggering their memory allocations. Microsoft made a big deal about threaded programming for OS/2 back in 1987, which is the same year that Apple finally added colors to their OS. Microsoft shipped a SMP OS in 1993, while Apple didn't get around to it until 2001. In short, I don't belive the competition is behind Apple at all on this point.
Primarily software -- if you want drivers optimized for Half-Life, get the consumer card. For drivers certified for 3D apps, get the pro card. It might seem like a rip-off on the surface, but the reality is that both pros and consumers are subsidizing each other and they are both getting cheaper parts as a result.
Anyway, the 3D software is usually priced at the point that the hardware isn't a major consideration anyway. You can get pack-in pro 3D cards for basically nothing if you buy the right Dell workstation.
> Then again, the W3C loves to standardize everything, so I suppose it shouldn't come as any real surprise
Actually it's a pleasant surprise to me, as the W3C has historically focused on hypertext documents and has done almost nothing to improve the state of the art of web applications.
We're talking about a feature introduced in 1999 that has almost universal support already. Maybe they can even get around to completing standardization of the form.* API (from Netscape 2.0) one of these days!
Trying to do what you suggest would create a support nightmare, especially across programs other than Office.
You know if other word processors can't figure out how to open an HTML file named *.DOC, they're basically broken. It's not possible to even try to open a DOC file without sniffing the magic bits (because a ton of them are actually RTF).
And it's funny to talk about "support nightmares" when you're bitching that their solution is basically hosed. Feeding HTML4/CSS1 to Word/Excel is by far the most superior way that I've found to create simple "DOC" or "XLS" files from a web application. Let MS do the work so you don't have to.
I remember hearing that ActiveX would only allow privileged operations if the code was digitally signed and verified as trustworthy, and hence would be as safe as Java
This is actually true. A digitally-signed Java Applet can do everything a digitally-signed ActiveX applet can do. If you think Java can't delete your hard drive or install spyware, you're just wrong -- it can and it does.
Not to mention that the Sun Java plugin has also had a pretty lousy record of security issues that almost rivals the problems with ActiveX.
Odd problem, because Word generally opens simple HTML documents directly just fine without much formatting loss. Maybe they are being too tricky and actually trying to generate a DOC instead of just sending HTML with the Word MIME type.
And neither is the HTML editing component which was apparently used.
Pointing fingers at IE is sometimes appropriate, but in this case, this sort of web application is simply impossible without using IE-originated extentions.
I mean an office system also works fine with an integrated Intel video card, but I can think of plenty of things, and not just games, that benefit or mandidate a better one.
I'm curious what. Intel video works fine for most sorts of 2D graphics or video applications (photoshop, etc), and for professional 3D, you want a professional card. I guess what I'm getting at is that there's very little need for a consumer Nvidia/ATI card in a business system other than for games.
If we are talking about the engine, then it would cause a lot of issues for the system, since a lot of the system actually seems to make use of that engine.
Right, so it's very likely they will not remove the "engine".
More likely they just made a copy of IE7 and called it "Windows Web Browsing Services" or something and it's just as integrated as always.
OSI was a more open standard. OSI was developed by an international consortium, while TCP/IP was a loosely documented by informal RFCs traded between US Govt researchers.
... ODF is more "official", but OpenXML has the vendor support.
I think the OSI/IP comparison is apt
No, 2% is Apple's current worldwide marketshare. While they might do better in certain segments, I don't see why Microsoft would particuarly care.
Except Alienware is already on the "standard platform" -- anyone can buy the AMD/Intel/NV/ATI parts. Rather than Old Saturn, AW is more along the lines of a custom car tuner or conversion van company that buys bodies from GM.
Retail sales for Windows are almost irrelvant compared to OEM sales. I don't see Microsoft making any special modifications for a vendor that is not a Windows OEM.
> 5% of the market a lot to ignore?
More like 2%, and they don't ignore it, they make software for it. (Including VirtualPC, which is likely more profitable per copy than a OEM Windows license).