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Re: Don't Be Soft On Microsoft



Hi.

After reading the flood of Microsoft messages around, I think I should
add a few hard facts to the interesting but largely-unbased argument.

First, regarding the need for a WYSIWYG word processor, and other "office"
application. The Unix world (actually, more specifically, the Linux 
world) has finally shaken the illusion (and quite a stupid one in my
opinion) that La/Tex can serve as a standard wordprocessor for the
masses. NO ONE can expect a secretary (or anyone else save a few 
technology-savvy people) to master anything of that complexity (and 
comparing with MS Word, people, it IS complex). Several new and interesting
alternatives have risen. First, Applixware, an Office suite sold by
Redhat is available (although commercially). It includes a WYSIWYG word
processor worthy of being used by anyone (including filters for word
documents), a spreadsheet tool, presentation tool, etc. Another suite
which I'm not sure is available yet is Staroffice which is slated to
do the same. Wordperfect, by the way, has been available for Linux 
for a LONG time. Finally, Corel is offering a Java port of their office
suite, and an alpha version is already available.

Which brings me to the next point - Java. Indeed, if anything can overthrow
the single-OS approach it's Java. The problems currently popping are
definitely no reason to rule out the entire language. For example, speed
will not be an issue once Just-in-time compilers will be widely
available (JIT means taking the Java bytecode and translating it to
machine binary and THEN executing the binary code, instead of doing
the translation at run-time). This would mean that startup speed would
still be slow, but run-time would be almost exactly as native binary code.
Commercial initiatives such as the aforementioned Corel Office for Java
are already under development and might topple Microsoft's firm grip
on the OS market. Java is still a young language, give it a fair chance.

Shay

--
Shay Rojansky, roji@cs.huji.ac.il                 Finger for PGP public key



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