Open Systems

[Steve Fouts <sfouts -at- ELLISON -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

Joe Fockler said:

(about format interchange between PageMaker and Frame)

|}
|} That could lead to a market monopoly. I like the fact that each
|} company must be innovative and clever. Makes the job tasks a
|} little more difficult, but gives us more products to choose
|} from.
|}

All those "Open Systems" folks would argue with you on that point. The
whole point to the SGML movement is the creation and use of a platform
and hardware independent file format.

The hope is that it leads away from a market monopoly of the likes created
when some monolithic software company creates a proprietary "standard" by
fiat. This situation tends to lead to survival of the largest, most popular,
etc.

The lack of a standard format that can be freely interchanged between various
software tools sometimes leads corporations to adopt corporate standards that
say "yay, verily, everyone must use the Iza Professional Writer when
composing pages for this company!" for everything from memos to 500 page
tech manuals. Ugly.

    _______________________
   /  ___  __/__\  \ /  / _\    Steve Fouts
  /___ \|  |  ___\  |  /  __\   sfouts -at- ellison -dot- ti -dot- com
 /   /  \  |      \   /      \
/_______/__|_______\_/________\ Unprovided with original learning,
uniformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition,
I resolved to write a book.    -- Edward Gibbon