[Am-info] Re: O/S 2 support - slightly off topic (my apologies)

[Marcus de Geus]

In reply to a message from "Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.org> dated =
2002-03-17 12:01:02 -0500 (EST) (Sun):

> But, putting OS/2 up on some pedestal and saying how spectacularly
> wonderful it is will draw my ire because it simply isn't.  It's
> interesting at best, and fraught with its own major design flaws.  It
> was better designed, and significantly more stable than Windows.  It
> also did an excellent job of running DOS and Windows 3.1 applications. 
> But it was not, in any respect that I'm aware of, an innovator or leader
> in OS or UI design.  (Well, perhaps their DOS boxes were innovative. 
> I'd really like to know how they made that work as well as they
> apparently did.)

Eric,

I fear you're approaching this from the wrong angle. Have you ever seriousl=
y tried to use OS/2 or eCS in the way it was designed to be used? I strongl=
y suspect that you haven't, and that you used it -- like many, if not most,=
 users -- simply as a glorified WinDOS preemptive multitasker with an ugly =
(from the bitmap-crazed WinDOS camp POV) interface. Yes, if all you want to=
 do is launch Office[tm] and leave it at that, OS/2 is a bad choice, if onl=
y for the (very true) fact that it has its design flaws (but then, name me =
a 10-year old OS that hasn't; come to that, name me a recent one that hasn'=
t). OTOH, if an object-oriented GUI is what you want (and I do, very much s=
o), there simply is no alternative, nor is there likely to be in the near, =
or even distant, future.

Calling software pass=E9 simply because it has been around for a (relativel=
y) long time is not only short-sighted, but plays right into the hands of t=
he folks who design their software with built-in obsolescence so silly "con=
sumers" will flock to their doors every year to get the latest model.

Bits and bytes are here to do a job, period (or 00101110, if you prefer). I=
f they don't do their job, by all means discard them and get a new load of =
ones and zeroes to do what you want, but please don't tell other people who=
 get by very nicely with their old set of bits that they should go out to g=
et this year's model. Fight the arseholes who invented built-in bitrot, not=
 the people who prefer to keep their data accessible over the years.

And seriously, if you ever find the time, borrow a copy of eCS (I'm sure th=
e folks at Serenity won't mind that much) and a copy of DeScribe (nobody le=
ft to mind #:-( ) and see for yourself what proper multithreaded multitaski=
ng can mean to you, the user. And for pete's sake, don't come back at me wi=
th the fact (which it is, agreed) that Acrobat and Netscape (or Mozilla) ar=
e crappy performers, even in OS/2. Of course they are, being ports from Win=
dows code. And so are GhostScript and GSView, being ports from Linux code. =
Even so, they work, even together, which is more than can be said for many =
other systems. And if more people had experienced the relief of being able =
to run a proper multitasking, multithreading OS, perhaps by now we might ha=
ve had a proper multithreaded OS/2 PDF reader, web browser, and PS viewer.

'Nuf said.

Regards,

Marcus de Geus
--
marcus@degeus.com
http://www.degeus.com