Re: The Death of Carbon

In article <13n0dmqrdqgp4e6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Daniel Johnson
<danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I could never figure out Microsoft's attitudes about printers in the
first place:
Rather than guide to a paperless office paradigm, Microsoft decided to
emphasize business EXACTLY as it was done beforehand: print out
everything, and store it outside the computer. The computer as
typewriter effort, because that made people feel less challenged by
technology. Okay, understandable, but not good.

Well, The Customer is Always Right, you know.
I'll take that as tongue-in-cheek. (There are maybe two companies that
operate that way.)
In any case, since there was no customer attitude before computers, and
today customers either realize their preferences, if they decide on
any. So whatever the OS makers create becomes the customer attitude.

But Microsoft seems to have built EVERYTHING assuming the printer was
critical. When I save a document in Word, is checks my printer first --
and tells me so.
(To _save_ a document? how is the printer relevant at all? Why does the
user need to be told? If it has to do either of those, and the printer
is off or none is installed, why doesn't it give an error?)

This is because the exact layout of the document will depend on what the
*printer* will do with it.
Sure, but this is not stuff needed just to save an ongoing document.
It's needed only at the printing function, which isn't the save
function.

Printers often have their own fonts, and small
differences in font metrics can lead to different pagination.
If sending to the printer changes ANYTHING, no matter how small, there
is another major problem. WYSIWYG is a presumption today, and using a
font that has any different metrics is supposed to be LONG GONE.

Printing a different number of lines is bad; to a different number of
pages is totally unacceptable. It also happens to me fairly often when
I move from one Windows computer to another (which I had to do when an
office computer wouldn't recognize it's own printer for a week, for no
apparent reason).

With Windows, it is possible to take that sort of thing into account in
advance.
But it's a mistake to do so, because there is no reason to assume that
local printer will be the place it is printed. Especially so in the
environment of business, where the document may change locations many
times.
.