Switch to HTML format a Microsoft power grab?
Every so often, Microsoft comes up with a new "domination
stategy", a way to, ultimately, either take over a market
(we'll just give away what Company X, the leader, sells as
their flagship product) or get you to buy more software from
them you don't really want (assuming you use any).
This is why new version of MS-Word have new file formats
(you get New Word with New PC, folks in your company
exchange documents and before you know it, you have to
upgrade Old PC to New Word and, perhaps, New
OS).
The latest spin, revealed by one of my best MS contacts, is
terribly insidious, though on the surface it sounds almost
innocent. The basic premise is: Microsoft is switching from
their proprietary .HLP file format to HTML, and they're
encouraging all developers to do so as well.
Now scratch the surface of that seemingly innocent move.
You'll find the new document format isn't normal HTML, but
HTML with some Microsoft proprietary format and compression,
only read by Internet Explorer 4.something. You'll also see
that Microsoft developer documentation no longer comes in
paper, but only in this format. So every developer is
forced to run IE4.x or, given all the bugs that entails,
Windows 98.
But, you might think, couldn't developers opt for normal
HTML? Right you are, they could, it would work. And it's
well known just where in the Microsoft Certification Queue
that'll land you. So it's impractical. So all new
documentation sent out by all other companies on Windows
will, sooner or later, adopt this new format. Which you
can't read without IE4.0, which kills your system stability
under Windows 95. So you're virtually forced to upgrade to
Windows 98, without any "gun to the head" even implied here,
since the program APIs (at least for a few months) are all
still the same.
Those boys may be evil, but they do that part of it so well,
it's like "car crash as an artform".
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