From owner-freebsd-chat Mon May 28 1:51:35 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from nef.ens.fr (nef.ens.fr [129.199.96.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB92137B423 for ; Mon, 28 May 2001 01:51:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Rahul.Siddharthan@lpt.ens.fr) Received: from corto.lpt.ens.fr (corto.lpt.ens.fr [129.199.122.2]) by nef.ens.fr (8.10.1/1.01.28121999) with ESMTP id f4S8pTR25984 ; Mon, 28 May 2001 10:51:29 +0200 (CEST) Received: from (rsidd@localhost) by corto.lpt.ens.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) id KAA43969 ; Mon, 28 May 2001 10:52:05 +0200 (CEST) Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 10:52:05 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: "Pedro F. Giffuni" Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The desktop apathy Message-ID: <20010528105205.B43555@lpt.ens.fr> Mail-Followup-To: "Pedro F. Giffuni" , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010527082742.049003f0@localhost> <20010527172838.A11174@lpt.ens.fr> <3B11E61C.95D0BA0D@pitt.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3B11E61C.95D0BA0D@pitt.edu>; from pfg1+@pitt.edu on Mon, May 28, 2001 at 01:46:04AM -0400 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Pedro F. Giffuni said on May 28, 2001 at 01:46:04: > I think Jordan's article holds the key to this situation. Apple might > be the David that is required to take the desktop out from Microsoft's > field and hopefully also will take us to a better league. FWIW, I also > think Apple has a good chance now that MS is screwing up with their > .net strategy. All I really want is an open standard. I don't mind people sending me postscript or pdf generated from MS word; but if they're going to send me .doc files, I want the format to be well documented by Microsoft, so that I can convert it to whatever format I want. If everyone including Microsoft switched to some XML thing and agreed on some common standards for it, I really wouldn't care if 99% of the world continued to use Microsoft... In the absence of Microsoft taking the lead, it would be nice if the remaining word processor people, at least -- Applix, Corel, Staroffice/Sun, KDE, Abisource etc -- got together and hammered out something, and implemented it themselves. (Ditto for spreadsheets, presentations, etc, which I don't really deal with.) R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message