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


On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, J.J. Linden wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, Donovan White wrote:
> 
> > "GREG BILKE"  said:
> 
> > >Currently, our newsletter is a simple ASCII file that users view from the
> > >VAX.  We would like to take advantage of the PC's graphics capabilities to
> > 
> > Why not just use HTML and a browser? 
> > 
> > As soon as you make a connection to the Net almost everyone in your company
> > is going to use a browser, so go in on top, get a site license for a decent
> > piece of software, this way you can standardize and minimize your support
> > problems. 
> 
> Since for in-house purposes, you're not limited by time/bandwidth 
> constraints, why not use either postscript or PDF (Adobe Acrobat)? (There 
> are others I'm less familiar with, such as Common Ground, which would 
> also work well.

I would lean toward a combination of html and PS/PDF/JPEG.  Using raw PDF
tends to make organizing documents a bit challenging.

> HTML, which I love dearly (I make some of my living writing it), is a 
> very limiting format.  Even when everyone is using a common browser, so 
> that the documents will appear the same, there are real limitations on 
> the layout and font capabilities -- vis. fonts, there basically are none.

That's actually the point.  I LIKE having a "Burger King Browser" (have 
it your way) that lets me choose what I like best.  You can have the 
pretty artwork, but let me choose when to display "small helvetica" vs. 
"large Times-Roman".  Let me decide how wide to make the screen (it also 
has to support a statistics display, mailer, and word-processor, and I 
switch between the four with impunity), I'll give you the whole screen 
when my boss wants to see the "Internet Dog and Pony Show".

> Furthermore, you still can't stick a graphic or photograph just 
> anywhere.

You can put it left, center, or right.  Even three wide.

>  A bit of creative hitmalizing (beyond what you can do with a 
> simple converter) can put your graphics in a reasonably attractive 
> location.  But you certainly can't put a sidebar physically beside a 
> story, or have words flow around photographs.

For a print, publication, where I can get 1200 DPI resolution, I might 
want to tile up floating frames (I'd use FrameMaker).  On an SVGA 
screen, where every pixel counts, I'll be happy to be able to see the 
figure on the same page as the text.  It's also nice to be able to chose
when and whether I want to load every Icon too.

For intra-company communications, I already spend too much time 
"beautifying text".  I can use a WSYWIG HTML editor like HotMeTaL or 
EZ.

> I've never written a .pdf or Common Ground document, but as long as you 
> pay attention to the size of the computer screen (as opposed to the size 
> of a newspaper page, e.g.), you can create excellent looking documents 
What makes you think I WANT you TAKING UP 100% of my screen?  It's bad 
enough when some "Web Artiste" starts messing with my color registers.
It's fun trying to read an "Orange on Red" screen.

I also have the luxury of being able to run multiple instances of a web 
browser, or multiple browsers.  Try flipping between these two urls, 
1/screen:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/NCSAMosaicHome.html
http://marketplace.com/e-papers.list.www/e-papers.conferences.html

I read news between compiles, fires, phone-calls, and memos.
If I have to wait 10 seconds to flip screens, I just have to reset my 
schedules to allow for the extra time.  I figure I spent over 2 years of 
my life "waiting" for Microsoft oriented applications to start, stop, 
reboot, or just flash the hourglass.  I may have a 10 Mb/sec ethernet, 
but I share it with 20 other users.

> which, frankly, will put the html ones to shame -- at least until the 
> advent and standardization of html4.  Whatever that will include.

We haven't even got an open specification for HTML3 and he's already 
"locking up" the HTML4 market.  Maybe we will go SGML instead :-).

Think I'm kidding? 
Talk to AT&T (SysV), Sun(NeWS) OSF (Motif), or Novell (IPX/SPX).
or their replacements: (BSD, OSF/1, Linux), (X11), (XView), (TCP/IP)

It's very hard to establish a monopoly when you are competing with 5,000+ 
engineers.

> Jay Linden                                           Phone: (416) 510-8948
> Toronto, Canada                                  Fax/Modem: (416) 510-8949
> Net Presence/Marketing/Netsurfing        email: jjlinden@gold.interlog.com
>      
> 
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon May  8 20:23:55 1995