MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-06-10 |
| FROM | Ron Guerin
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] I Bid You All Adieu
|
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Subject: Re: [hangout] I Bid You All Adieu
From: Ron Guerin
To: Jay Sulzberger
Cc: "Brendan W. McAdams" , NYLXS
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,On Mon, 2002-06-10 at 13:26, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
> On 10 Jun 2002, Brendan W. McAdams wrote:
> > And what about standards? Photoshop is the standard in the graphics
> > world. People send me Photoshop files all the time.
But it's a de-facto standard. No one agrees on it's "bestness" except
Adobe. Part of the problem there is of course people are sending you
Photoshop files all the time. They should be chided for doing so. I do
that when people send me Photoshop files and now they all send me
standard formats instead. They simply don't know any better usually.
This is true for any _non-standard_ program like Photoshop.
Whose fault is it if I send you a file you need a $15,000 piece of
software to read? (it really happens)
> > I still can't get the GIMP to read Photoshop files entirely. It doesn't
> > handle certain layer masking, it can't read layer names, it can't do a
> > lot of things. Working within its own limitations GIMP is a great
> > little program though.
> >
> > Excel? Well, Gnumeric is doing a great job there. But being an idiot
> > regarding spreadsheets I can't really talk - I'm sure there's alot of
> > functionality not THERE yet.
As Jay could have probably guessed, the Gnumeric folks have given up
trying to keep up with Microsoft. They've abandoned Gnome Basic and
they're hoping to catch up by leaping into .NET by way of Mono.
> >
> > Word? Don't get me started. Yes, I can read Word Documents.
> > StarOffice is happy to eat up all my system resources and then give me a
> > shittily rendered representation of the original document for my
> > troubles. Stuff like embedded variables/autotags don't translate
> > though. In the business world this makes it useless to me. And abiword
> > can't even handle TABLES.
>
> What are the cold hard numbers on the costs of using Microsoft's odd Emacs
> cum worm substrate? Clearly we win this one, today.
I know everything we hear about those (Microsoft) tools is largely
bullshit. People find them extremely hard to use, and in fact most
people don't use them. I would guess of all the installed copies of
Office, fewer than 10% of them are ever used (in the sense that it's a
suite), and in the sense of the individual programs, probably at least
25% never run even Word or Excel. I can't prove it, but I'd guess the
Microsoft Word Viewer (which doesn't enable any word-processing
functionality) could replace at least 50% of the installations of
Microsoft Office without anyone ever noticing.
If someone produced office tools (suite) that actually made office
workers more productive, the CFOs of the Fortune 1000 would break your
door down to get at it.
> >
> > You have to keep in mind that even if it's a "different" product, that
> > all the functionality has to be there! A Spreadsheet is a spreadsheet,
> > and a word processor is a word processor. There are features that in
> > this day and age, people expect from these types of applications. You
> > fail to see that there is still a lot of innovation in Windows
> > software. I realize why you see this but there are some great products
> > out there. I still happen to think Visio is a great product, and I
> > mourn every day I use it the day that Microsoft bought Visio Corp (who
> > was always an M$ lapdog, unfortunately). Yet nobody has given me a way
> > to do good network design, flowcharts, etc under *nix.
>
> Nonsense. This strategy of trying to keep up with formats controlled by
> the competition cannot win. We can produce and have produced products
> which do not have all the "functionality" of the competition and which
> have won in the market.
I find myself staking out a middle territory here. Interoperability is
a must from the user perspective. The problem is like a marriage, or a
proper fight, it takes two to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, it is
only our side that pursues this goal. Adobe is probably aware of The
GIMP and is pleased that it does not read PSD files properly.
I would also have to agree that we need to understand what our goals
are. GIMP was not made to be a "Photoshop replacement", it was designed
simply with "be a raster graphics program" in mind.
So when you say all the features "have to be there", well I think in
GIMP they are. You're confusing feature-bloat and sameness with
compatibility and standards. Photoshop should be the poster child for
needless bloat and bad ideas. It's a horrible program, it's just that
people are so accustomed to using it, they can't see it anymore.
I wrote most of this before reading Marco's more informed reply than
mine, but I'm going to keep this bit...
Spend time with all the source-secret raster graphics programs you can
find, and you'll really wonder why anyone uses Photoshop. Photoshop may
have market share, but I think it's probably near the bottom in
usefulness. All the interesting things I see done "in Photoshop" are
really just an exercise in applying 3rd party filters.
Evolution and to a lesser extent OpenOffice were created specifically to
offer alternatives to Microsoft products. A key design goal of
Evolution was to produce a "Unix-grade" e-mail client that looks and
feels so convincingly like Microsoft Outlook that users won't even
notice that it doesn't crash and generally works properly.
Evolution was created therefore, specifically to enable the elimination
of Windows boxes. And I think it will be a key tool in doing so.
Whether or not Ximian makes money at it is a separate issue and remains
to be seen.
> > Should NYLXS express an interest in working with me on /PROVIDING/
> > software to the *Nix community; either in the form of innovative new
> > products or in the form of improvements to existing products, then yes,
> > I would be willing to give this another shot.
There's things afoot you might want to be involved in. Planning stage
at the moment, but if you want a more hands-on approach in things
there's no need for you personally to be involved the "administrative"
stuff. Drop me a note.
> > And for Ruben, if someone could only come out with a GNU/spellcheck
> > program =P
>
> I KNOW CRACKMONKEY AND YOU SIR ARE NO CRACKMONKEY!
For the record, it's CrackMonkey 0, CEO of Brooklyn 1. Ruben was amused
when I told him how it is now the stuff of FAQ and legend. ;)
Ron
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
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