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From: richard@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Desktop publishing systems?
Message-ID: <2703@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 25 Nov 88 01:20:11 GMT
References: <2612@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <673@wilbur.unix.ETA.COM> <831@io.UUCP> <1429@zen.UUCP>
Reply-To: richard@uhccux.UUCP (Richard Foulk)
Followup-To: comp.sys.hp
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 34

[posted to comp.text, followups to comp.sys.hp]

} Doesn't anybody write document preperation systems for Hewlett-Packard
} bit-mapped displays?
} 
} Don't you like them ? Is there something wrong with them ?
} 
} I'm serious about this. When I hear about a new funky piece of software I find
} that I'll probably never be able to run it without someone buying me a Sun
} workstation. The Sun workstation (as far as I can see) has very little to
} separate it performance-wise and market-wise for a publishing system.

When you buy computing equipment there are many things you must
take into consideration in order to make a good decision.

Many machines end up as a "voice crying in the wilderness", as no one
bothers to port their software to them.

So if you don't plan to write all your own software you have to
consider how popular the machine is or is expected to become.

HP makes reasonable equipment.  But it's not usually very innovative.
And it's often over-priced.  So it isn't usually as popular as some
of its competitors.

At this point HP has to play catch up.  So even if they seem competitive
now their reputation gets in their way.

If I was choosing which machines to port a product to, HP would
certainly be near the bottom of the list.

Simply not a big enough market.

(What we need is a good package from the GNU people.)