Re: Future with Ada

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> The problem is that Micro$oft uses "MS-Word-Compatibility" to kill their
> competition. As soon as you can suck up an MS-Word file and spit one out,
> they go and change the format and you're forever playing catch-up. Not a
> good thing.

Well, not for MS's competition, no.

> Where is the problem?

As soon as you try to sell it to an ad executive, CEO, or other
non-technical person, and explain that they can't read the documents
made up by people in other companies, or perhaps even other departments.
Nor can they send the document. Nor is it compatible with the add-ons
that other folks use. Etc.

I'll repeat - if it doesn't read & write MSWord files, it won't be
popular enough to be a killer app. I also suspect you underestimate just
how much spif really is in MS Office already.

Maybe if MSOffice ossifies and you can actually catch up on a
feature-by-feature basis...

But I think it would be more effective to find something *new* to do,
where you can start small and still have a chance of being popular.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
   You will soon read a generic fortune cookie.