Re: """Standard""" software

On 2026-06-27, Your Name wrote:

> On 2026-06-26 08:37:41 +0000, Nuno Silva said:
>>>> On Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:34:01 +1200, Your Name wrote:
>>>>> On 2026-06-25 05:55:22 +0000, Nuno Silva said:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And who declared Microsoft products "standard software"?
>>>>>
>>>>> Most of the business world did years ago ...
[...]
>> I think relativism from your part would improve matters too. It's
>> not even a de facto standard the way you stated it,
>
> The majority of businesses in the world use Microsloth Windoze (about
> 60%-66%*) and Microsloth Ofiice (about 82% in 2017*)... they *are*
> basically the standard and have been for decades now. It may be slowly
> beginning to change.
>
> * That figure is for those using the lastest versions Windowze 10 and 11,
>  so doesn't include all those still using older versions.
>
> * A very quick search doesn't turn up more up-to-date figures for Microsloth
>  Office, only for the online Office 365 version, which doesn't include
>  offline users. In terms of just online office apps, Google currently has
>  the most users.

And Google Docs isn't exactly that good. I kept hitting "why doesn't it
have $BASIC_FEATURE_OOo_HAD_FOR_YEARS_BEFORE?", and the version control
being automatic is a bit too useless. For people who don't want to
bother with it? Maybe it's ok. But if I'm aware of it, I may want to
group the changes under a descriptive label, and make separate labels
for separate sets of changes.

You know what's funny? Even if it misses one feature or another, it has
Wordart. (Or at least had last I checked.)

Overall, besides WYSIWYG not being my thing, (La)TeX is just much easier
to version-control. And can be written using a text editor running on a
video terminal.

But hey, at least Google Docs isn't Microsoft Office, and at least some
of the links to the document have a somewhat parsable form that can be
used to create the download/export URL. (So if your browser does not run
Google Docs, or the computer is not powerful enough, you can instead
download a PDF, if all you need is to read the document, or I guess
download a format for editing - although that's not something I've done
with that, I think it's possible too.)

> Probably the best known example was Microsloth Exploiter that pushed
> its own way of doing things to the point that website makers had to
> use a variety of techniques try to accomodate two different options,
> depending on which browser you were using. Those that simply went with
> Exploiter's way caused compatibility issues for people using other web
> browsers. This was usually most evident with government websites where
> they never bothered to test things on any other browser or OS.
>
> In fact, one charity company I worked for had to file monthly reports
> to their main funder via a website system. They used Apple computers
> and none of the web browsers would work properly with the website
> report system (including Mac Exploiter). The only option was for them
> to get a Windoze PC with Exploiter solely to do the monthly reports.
>
> Such issues do still come up from time to time, especially with
> government websites, but mainly if you're still using older versions
> of web broswers.

No, these days is "if you're using any but a few select browsers", not
"older versions". Be it because of JS or CSS features, be it because
they use some service like Cloudflare that should have no place in
government websites.

(I do wonder if Cloudflare has been intentionally trying to bring along
the better reputation of Browser Integrity Check (which, other than
coding errors on Cloudflare's behalf, including at least one massive
self-DDoS (falling back to step 0 if a subsequent HTTP request lacked
Origin:, with no or little timeout), had plenty of fallbacks to support
more browsers) to the new verification system based on "Turnstile"
(which is designed to support a few listed browsers).)

(Google's reCAPTCHA isn't that much better. It still works on SeaMonkey,
but not thanks to Google who found it fitting to tell me to ask on
StackOverflow for a problem with *Google's* code. That's on top of the
Google issue tracker for reCAPTCHA having a not-so-little issue that
makes it more difficult to report issues with reCAPTCHA... (guess what
the issue is))

-- 
Nuno Silva