Re: common place apps in forth available, for example irc, or multi

On Feb 10, 9:45 pm, pml540...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> On Feb 11, 2:01 am, John Doty <j...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> .
> .
> .
>
> > It was litigated out of the market. So we can't know if it would have
> > been a success.
>
> That's a bait and switch. I carefully qualified my original
> description 'it
> was "better" as a product' with '...as a product'. It was in use as
> the spreadsheet issued by Monash University for MBA units, when I did
> mine (1990-1993). They had obtained a grandfather arrangement to stay
> with it for a while even after commercial sales had been halted, since
> they had already bought it with a licence to issue it for course work
> like that. Sounds like success as a product to me - all the lack of
> op****tunity for COMMERCIAL success shows is that we don't know if the
> whole deal would have worked, paperback software cheap pricing
> business model and all. Oh, and I kept it around on my home PC for use
> for a while after that, since I was given it for general personal non-
> commercial use.
>
>
>
> > And again, I said 'never had *much* success at "me too" products'. A
> > single counterexample is insufficient here, even if not flawed.
>
> That's why I wasn't asserting anything like that much, just
> contributing one minor data point against your position and being
> careful to preface it with "That's not entirely correct". My own
> feeling is, Forth can achieve and has achieved worthwhile clones in
> earlier days, but that these days there is a lot more proprietary
> stuff like data formats, and more libraries etc. to reverse engineer,
> so that the cost of doing it doesn't make sense any more.
>
> Oh, yes - it was called VP-Planner, but by the time I met it there was
> an upgraded version around that was called VP-Plus. The main
> functional improvement on Lotus 123 that I could see was background
> processing for calculation and printing - my guess is, from the
> Forth's own multi-tasking. I still have it around somewhere, on
> mislaid diskettes and on an old PC that has trouble booting these
> days. One day I might spend some time getting it up to see if there
> are any old files worth salvaging; maybe I'll get hold of VP-Plus too.
> P.M.Lawrence.



sounds like awesome examples of nice working good looking software
snuffed by lawyer rats.