Re: For TBaehr Re: XPL, DLG, Develop

[LESLIE319@xxxxxxxx]

Mr. Frank,

Two comments on your impassioned defense of your product against the
"indictment" of the estimable Robert Holmgren, whom I very much
respect, and whom I thank very much for his challenging message.


1. It is emphatically not the function of the Tech Group, or of
any business for that matter, to make its product harder for
consumers to use. It would be ideal, of course, if everybody did
"look under the hood" to see how their machines work. I wish
this were so, too. But they can't be made to do this, nor should
they. Unfortunately (for power users), but fortunately
(for software developers) the more people who use a project, the
less expertise there is to be distributed. Would anyone wish to
ban the automatic shift from cars on the grounds that their
presence deprives motorists of working knowledge of how their
cars work? I think not.

2. This said, I must also add that Tech Group could--and
should--do a better job of keeping their power users informed of
what _is_ under the hood. I have been asking for months for the
return of application notes as well as a booklet, similar to the
one that was offered with 3+, for XPL, always to be told this is
a "good idea." But these "good ideas," alas, are never
implemented. Additionally, so simple a thing as the elimination
of a nonsensical, and erroneous, prompt message in HPLaser3 and
HPLaser4.bin files that tell you "left margin on this printer
must be 2.5 di," or "top margin on this printer must be 3 lines,"
neither of which are true, seems to be beyond your ability to
deal with.

Nor is any attempt made to describe _which_ extended ASCII
characters work with _which_ HP symbol sets. It is absurd that
full advantage of this marvellous improvement to standard ASCII
can't be used because of nonexistent documentation.

--Leslie--