From: allard@isi.edu (Dennis Allard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview
Subject: Re: no longer using DV or QEMM
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:13:09 GMT
Reply-To: allard@isi.edu (Dennis Allard)
Distribution: world
Organization: USC Information Sciences Institute
Keywords: flames

I was not trying to start a flame war, but...

(note, I am flaming '>', I am not flaming '> >')

valley@gsbsun.uchicago.edu (Doug Dougherty) spews:
> bodoh@cae.wisc.edu (Daniel Bohoh) writes:

> >>(I wrote:)
> >>(2) DV does not support Windows in 386 enhanced mode.  I do not have
> >>a clue as to whether I really need 386 enhanced mode, but ...
> >Very few Windows-specific programs require 386 Enhanced mode.  ...

Hence some do.  Wonder which ones.

> I didn't think there were any,
I thought you were a guru.
                                 but you can bet that the
> "gratuitous incompatibility boys" are hard at work on creating some.
> 
> I imagine uSoft having a backroom operation, similar to the one
> Doonesbury describes for the Bush campaign (working on find more women
> and drugs in Clinton's past), working on finding ways to put gratuitous
> incompatibilities into uSoft products.

It's because about 10 million people such as yourself bought into
uSoft and DOS that DesqView even needed to be invented.  I didn't vote
for either Bush or DOS.  I use DOS out of sheer necessity, and buy
hacks such as DesqView also out of sheer necessity, and not because
they are paradigms of software engineering.

> >>Windows gives me something I'm used to (virtual memory, ...
> >And DV gives you ... pre-emptive multitasking.  Windows does not!

True.

> >>(3) Things are simpler this way.  So far, Windows let's me do what
> >>I want to do.

I didn't mean to imply that I like Windows.  When Ken Thompson invented
Unix in 1969, he did so because he was (more or less a quote:) "tired
of the operating system getting in his way."

Unix has overgrown it's britches to become unwieldy.  DOS always was
behind the times.  What's needed now is for someone to come up with
another small is beautiful (yes, even including the GUI) OS.  NT will
surely NOT be it.  The revamped OS/2 may be a temporary fix.  Maybe
NEWS or X on Unix System V is the answer.  But what is also NOT the
answer is the need to buy system add ons such as DesqView or Norton
what's ya ma thinger for Windows in order to try to fix an inadequate
system after the fact.

I respect DesqView.  But a good OS will make it obsolete.  Same comment
goes for DesqView/X.  Public domain X, or NEWS, or ?, should merely
be a built in part of the next good OS.

   (Daniel Bohoh:)
> >Running DOS apps under DV is much simpler and much more stable than
> >Windows.

That's really not true.  On my 386, most DOS applications are simple
to run from the file manager and they don't crash.  This includes
FoxPro, Paradox, Emacs, Brief, and Skyglobe.

> >You can tune the amount of time given to foreground and ...
> >... Without waiting minutes ...
> >... Windows is pretty.  That's about the only advantage it has, IMHO.

I think Daniel Bohoh is simply being too harsh on Windows, IMHO.  I
actually doubt that Daniel has used Windows much.  But his comments
are not totally unreasonable.

> In the hopes of stopping the flame war,
There wasn't a flame war going on.

  (Doug Dougherty:)
>                                       I think you just have to concede
> that QEMM/DV is not for everybody, and that, for lightweights, Windows
> does have an advantage.  In short, I don't think it is possible to
> create something that appeals to the masses that isn't in some way
> crippled.  (Simplicity vs. power)

You have been DOSwashed into believing that systems have to be complicated
in order to be powerful.  Not true, as attested to by the orignial Unix,
by the Common Lisp Object System, by Relational database technology, by
GNU emacs (at the user level), and myriad other examples.  Neither DOS
nor DesqView are among them.

> And this guy is clearly a lightweight.
I started writing compiler generators in 1973 and have programmed
in C since Unix version 4 in 1975.  When did you say you were born?

> ****************************************************************************
> The Slug		valley@gsbsun.uchicago.edu

Dennis Allard
allard@isi.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview