To: bskeet@usa.net
Cc: Greg Stephan , online-news@marketplace.com
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On Sat, 1 Oct 1994 jvncnet!usa.net!bskeet@dowv wrote:

> >>   Suppose, as Gary Wolf writes in WIRED, that Mosaic is "well on its way
> >> to becoming the world's standard interface." (While you're at it, suppose
> >(cut copy)>
> >Greg Stephan: wrote
> I was one of those people who was disappointed to realize that, after going
> to all that trouble to make my Mosaic home page pretty with specific fonts
> and sizes for my headers, typographic choice is completely independent of
> the html document.  I had very little control over how my pages would look
> from machine to machine.
Do you really want absolute control of the fonts?  Are you willing to
commit to providing the fonts for every possible platform that supports
html?  Remember the internet consists of 25 Million hosts.  Only about 60%
are Windows 3.1 hosts.  What about Macs? What about PCs runing Linux?, BSD?,
SCO?, Solaris?
 
> There are some solutions around the corner.  Acrobat allows complete
> control of the look of documents--fonts can be embedded in a PDF file.  And
> it is legal.  The recipient, whether on a mac or pc will see the document
> exactly as the creator intended it, and can print it--all the postscript
> info is retained.

Again, is ADOBE promising that every Mosaic Client machine will be a valid
recipient?  Including linux, sco, bsd, solaris, NT, OS/2 - all versions,
all platforms, all hardware, all configurations.

TCP/IP isn't the greatest protocol in the world.  There have been several
attempts to propose new, improved protocols.  The problem is that there
are 25 million machines and about 2 million possible combinations to
support.  On the internet, GNU  and copylefted software in source code
format is the final definition of the standard.  You may have downloaded a
binary version of Mosaic, but the source code is also available.

The market of the internet is different.  You aren't dealing with
teenagers dialing in for 30 minutes for a single session dialogue.  You
are dealing with Servers connected 24/7 and providing fire-wall services. 
Corporations often deal in lots of 1000-3000 nodes.  It becomes much
cheaper to hire a contracter to upload GNU upgrades once/month than to
have to buy and install commercial software 10 times/year.

> I think this is pretty cool and am pursuing the idea of using Mosaic as a
> delivery and distribution tool, and Acrobat as a presentation tool.

> One last thing.  PDF files can get pretty big, especially with a bunch of
> fonts embedded (for instance, to retain the look of the ads). However, a
The main purpose of Mosaic/HTML is that one can pass some of the
information in bulk - downloads, broadcasts, or email - and deliver the
bulky information THAT IS REALLY WANTED - via an on-line connection.

If you start sending 25 2 megabyte PDF files because you think I want to
see pictures of your town mayor, I'll pull the plug on that feed.
 
> Bill

	Rex.
	(My employer does not necessarily agree with me.)





From jvncnet!usa.net!bskeet Tue Oct  4 02:31:58 1994
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To: Rex Ballard