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References: <3la4ab$g39@saba.info.ucla.edu> <9503292014.AA26582@source.asset.com> <3lltlj$fcj@curly.cc.utexas.edu> <9504031455.AA38255@source.asset.com>  
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On Thu, 6 Apr 1995, Malcolm Bebb wrote:

> In article <9504031455.AA38255@source.asset.com>,
> bullardc@source.asset.com (Claude L. Bullard) wrote:
> 
>  
> > My point is, or should have been, that notation wars only *charge* the
> > participants.  If PDF is easier to create than HTML and has 80% of the
> > application functionality in a market where the vendor of the PDF product
> > has sufficient resources to manufacture, distribute and advertise, and
> > garners the support of governmental policy, *smart money* bets on PDF.  It

In January 1992, the *smart money* was on Novell IPX/SPX.  Of course 
there were a few of us fools who saw that the internet had grown to 
500,000 users and was growing at 20%/month.  Why?  Because Trumpet could 
be downloaded and installed for nearly free.  If you liked it, you bought 
it.  E-mail users grew at a rate of 20%/month, until practically everyone 
had an e-mail address Somewhere.  Then they became telnet/text users.  
Now they are becoming WEB users.  Why?  Because NCSA Mosaic was free, 
available in source code, and could be supported by about 500 engineers.

Anybody been watching what is happening to the Linux market lately?

> > simply becomes the path of least resistance.  However, for some, that last
> > 20% of functionality might be very important.  It isn't PDF vs SGML yet.
> > SGML isn't a page description language. HTML is.  Is that "sniffy" on my
> > part?

The key is that publishers and archive managers will need to index, 
organize, and search information quickly.  PDF doesn't support embedded 
key words.  SGML lets me see the different elements (tags), structure 
them in to the database of my choosing, and still format the content into 
a presentation that works with the WEB servers (HTML).

PDF does have a useful place, especially in the domain of charts and 
graphs, but only if it is available on all of the possible present and 
future platforms, with a minimum of delay.  This means publishing source 
under the terms of General Public License.  It can be a "no frills" 
implementation (parameters passed in flat text parameter files, but it 
should be complete, and 100% compatible with existing product.

There is still a market.  Even though Trumpet and other TCP/IP packages 
were available via download, Spry, NetManage, and FTP were very 
successful in selling packages which did little more than provide GUI 
interfaces to the parameter files (hosts, passwd, groups, dns,...)

The alternative would be to use compressed ghostscript or gplot for the 
graphs and charts, or convert them to JPEGs.

	Rex Ballard
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.




From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon May  8 18:55:24 1995