Re: Conversion filters (was NB Win availability)

[mike shupp ms44278@xxxxxxxx]

Rene von Rentzell wrote:
>
> I am with Peter Evans here. The last thing I need is an "intelligent"
> program a la MS Word that tried to guess what I want to do. And I am
> confident that in 50 years some people will still write documents and care
> what their documents look like. If by then only clever software of the type
> you describe is available, then I guess we will have to go back to
> typewriters.

Remember Moore's Law. Circuit density in PC chips doubles every 18-24
months-- and that seems likely to hold true for the next 20 years at
least.
Software capability doesn't rise at quite the same rate, but it will
increase as PCs become faster, with additional memory and more ambitious
operating systems. In 50 years then, we ought to expect PC software
with
somewhere between 1000 to 1 billion times the capability of current day
software. Even leaning so far to the conservative side that we fall on
our faces, software ought to be more capable than we can even dream of
today. You ought, for example, to be able to shove a piece of printed
paper through a scanner and let the computer figure out from that what
you
want as defaults for margins, type sizes, and indentations. Granted, on
occasion you might want to override those values, just as drivers
sometimes
find reasons to override their automatic transmissions, but most of the
time "good enough" really should be good enough.

In the meantime, of course, hold on to your typewriter. Maybe you'll
get
a nice tax writeoff when you donate it to a museum.


-----------------------------------------------

Mike Shupp
Graduate Student, Dept of Anthropology
California State University, Northridge
ms44278@xxxxxxxx
http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm