Subject: Re: Online design From: jvncnet!usa.net!bskeet (Bill Skeet) Date: Mon, 3 Oct 94 21:41:06 MDT

Cc: online-news@marketplace.com
Content-Length: 3949
Status: RO
X-Status: 
X-Lines: 85

>> >Greg Stephan: wrote *******CORRECTION******---Bill Skeet 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.

The content attributed to Greg Stephan throughout Rex's note was actually
written by Bill Skeet.  I don't know Greg Stephan, and he certainly should
not be held responsible for my statements. --Bill


>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?

I think the point I made was that 1) yes, I want control of the
fonts/typography because it is important for product identity and
legibility of the document, and 2) I don't need to provide the fonts to
users; current technology allows fonts to be embedded in a PDF
document--independent of the users' fonts and regardless of PC or MAC
hardware. Now, Unix? I don't think there is a Acrobat Reader available for
Unix machines. But then again, Macs and PCs account for the majority of the
*personal* computers.


>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.

Is there *anything* that covers all platforms, all hardware, all configurations?

I think this is a little unreasonable.

I can't speak for Adobe.  But Acrobat runs on both Macs and PCs, right now.
That covers most of the Mosaic client machines.


>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'm not sure what this stuff has to do with my points that Mosaic is a good
delivery mechanism for the public and Acrobat, a good presentation tool.
I'm interested to learn more...


>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.

Well, the connection to Mosaic isn't really a feed.  It allows the user to
browse a page and click on things that look interesting--allowing the user
to pick and choose which documents he or she would like to view.  And,
while file size is a concern, the PDF files I've created (some with more
than 50 pages) have never run over 500K.  Again, this model emphasizes user
freedom; If the document was, say, a newspaper, then the user might have
the choice of which sections were interesting, and, after selecting those
sections, could be charged for those documents.


Bill

*********************
Bill Skeet
Knight-Ridder Information Design Lab
Boulder, CO  80302
303-443-3312



From jvncnet!marketplace.com!owner-online-news Tue Oct  4 02:32:04 1994
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: Rex Ballard