Re: [tlug] Selective mojibake email

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 09:23:20AM -0700, Matt Gushee wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 02:22:30PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> 
> > The fact is that Microsoft does not properly implement standards that
> > it doesn't control, nor even its own.
> 
> Steve, that's unfair. If you said something like "usually does not"
> or "does not properly implement i18n-related standards," I
> wouldn't have a problem with it. But then, of course, it wouldn't
> be provocative, and I know how you love a good argument.  

No it was a generalization that is by and large true.
> 
> But I have had a fair amount of professional contact with Microsoft
> products and developers in the XML sphere, and I can say that they
> have properly implemented XSLT and are serious about properly 
> implementing other XML-related specs such as XML Schema -- which 
> they only partially control. Are their motives pure? I seriously 
> doubt it. But at least in that field, their management finds it 
> expedient for the time being to play by the rules; their developers 
> are sincerely trying to do the right things, and mostly succeeding.

Ok you have come up an area where they have or are trying to. Now lets
look at the others:

JAVA: (Didn't even really try)
OpenGL: (didn't even really try)
Kerberos: (broken: added non-propriatary extentions that broke
          compatibility for non-MS clients. Reversed Endianess of
          all things)
Win32 API: (ask the wine team if they implemented that correctly)

these are just a few examples mind you.
> 
> Of course, if you want to talk about deployment and documentation, the
> picture isn't quite so pretty.
> 

None of it is terribly pretty.  Does MS do everything wrong? No of course
not, but as far as standards go they tend to implement them their own way
often in an apparent attempt to subvert, but sometimes out of apparent
laziness where they don't seem to care about operability outside the MS
sphere. You are right however documentation is truly horrible.

--Matt
-- 
"Take away them collisions and the common channel and it's like Christianity 
 without Christ." -Jim Breen (speaking about "full-duplex" Ethernet)