RE: Diverse Tools (was HTML editors)

[Darren Barefoot <Darren -dot- Barefoot -at- capeclear -dot- com>]

Hi,

Thanks for that rant. It is, I'm afraid, the cry of the Beta user and the
electric car driver. Better ways always exist, but humanity rarely seems to
implement the best solution. You're preaching to the choir here, I work for
a Web services company--that HTML is relatively lame and that, say, XML,
UDDI and SOAP rock, is our bread and butter philosophy.

The Web does work. Why? Because millions of people use it to communicate and
conduct business every day. It works because I can almost always find the
information I need. If you want to compare this with your library analogy,
my success rate is about the same (after all, the library doesn't always
have all the books I want, does it?). Sure, it could work better, but then
the average incandescent light bulb wastes most of its energy on heat. It
still lights up the room.

As for HTML being "a kiddies' toy" (or should that be "kiddy's toy"?), it's
been effective enough for all those Web pages, hasn't it? People have been
able to exchange information using it. That's what it's good for, and it
seems to serve that purpose well enough.

By the way, given that half of North America is already using the Internet,
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say the Web isn't ready for
"prime time". DB.

Darren Barefoot
Technical Writer
Cape Clear Software
www.capeclear.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Simon North [mailto:north -at- synopsys -dot- COM] 
Sent: 05 September 2001 10:58
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Diverse Tools (was HTML editors)


Keith Cronin said: 

> you can't say that
> it doesn't work at all, can you? Can 50 million web pages be wrong?

OK, I'll rise to the bait ... 

what would you call "working". 50 million pages, fine, but the best 
search technology we can offer is FULL TEXT SEARCH ! you call 
that working? It's the equivalent of walking into the library of 
congress, dumping the catalog cards on the floor and then looking 
for a passage in a book. My definition of 'working' requires just a 
little more than that. 

<snip>
 


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