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From: folta@tove.cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: GO OS vs. Microsoft Pen Windows
Keywords: go microsoft stylus notebook windows
Message-ID: <31553@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 16 Mar 91 04:21:31 GMT
References: <71335@microsoft.UUCP>
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Reply-To: folta@tove.cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta)
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Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
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From what I have read, Pen Windows will not include any handwriting recognition
software, forcing programmers to write their own. The article said that GO
*does* provide handwriting recognition, so programmers can concentrate on
program functionality. (The lowest-common-denominator principal of the Mac
and NeXT.)

Also, as far as I understand, Windows is a GUI bolted onto a basically
non-GUI DOS, and now they are bolting a pen-based interface onto this?
Sounds like a lot of kludging to me.

Last, if Pen Windows comes out and is easy a transition as MS would have you
believe, then a lot of people will be porting programs to it that were
not designed with a notebook/pen in mind. Sort-of like text-based applications
ported to Windows. GO programmers will start out with a notebook/pen culture
and way of thinking that will make their software better and more elegant.

(I am biased here, since I believe that Windows is a rip-off of the Mac,
quickly knocked off (until 3.0 anyhow) to preempt the better Mac GUI. Sounds
like Pen Windows is the same thing. Again, this is my bias, and we probably
don't want to argue this point as it really doesn't bear on the technical
question asked.  But you did ask for our opinions :-))
--


Wayne Folta          (folta@cs.umd.edu  128.8.128.8)