Re: Windows at 30

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Kari, re TrueType, it was capable of vastly better screen output than
ATM, Postscript, DisplayScript, and that was more true then than now
but it is still true. MS had anti-aliased greyscale bitmapped fonts
built into the tt scalable fonts that were way ahead of anything
Adobe could do, then or now. Of course, the amount of work involved
in creating such fonts was huge, much more than the average type
designer would have either the interest or the competence to do. I
only design PS fonts but I acknowledge that TT is the superior
format. High quality printing is another story completely. High
quality rasterization of TT had, astonishingly, not been demonstrated
even by 1997.


MS had the opportunity to embrace GX, the best of Apple's pre-OSX
technologies. If it had, we would have a lot more high quality
software on both platforms, since, shortly thereafter, Apple itself
ditched GX, partly under pressure of established developers (who then
went on, individually, to spend the next five years coding what was
available gratis in GX).


At 06/03/2016 10:22, you wrote:
> Carl,
>
> Yes, I still remember Win 3.0, which worked even on an AT with a
> Hercules card. Win 3.1 was more robust, but it needed more resources
> and would have been much better without TrueType. ATM was the better
> solution that was adopted for OS/2 by IBM. MS botched this at the
> time, but in the long run was proved right. Why license, if you can
> build a somewhat working solution yourself.
>
>
> Let's not forget about the alternatives of the day that were able
> contenders for a graphical operating system. There were quite a few
> (Xerox, GEM, Deskmate, etc.):
>
> http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
>
> On the same page, more interesting things, like the Win shells built
> on top of Win 3.1x (NewWave, hDC Windows Express). I have fond
> memories of hDC applications that had XP-like start menus and Win
> 8-style start boxes back in the early 1990's. The hDC guys were a
> bunch of ex-MS developers that had very good knowledge of the
> Windows internals, and their hDC Power Keyboard is one of greatest
> Win 3.1 utilities. I am still using it in Win 3.1.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kari Eveli
> LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
> lexitec@xxxxxxxx
>
> *** Lexitec Online ***
> Lexitec in English: http://www.lexitec.fi/english.html
> Home page in Finnish: http://www.lexitec.fi/
>
> 6.3.2016, 2:57, Carl Distefano wrote:
> > A stroll down (Random-Access) Memory Lane for all of you Windows fans:
> >
> > http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9759874/microsoft-windows-visual-history-30-years