CompuServe Messages

Gee, Erik, I didn't mean to insult your religion or anything like that. I was just expressing my personal opinions about the Amiga OS and not demonstrating "flippant and rude treatment" of a sacred object. You might check the Amiga postings again, though, in regard to the "thrashing" I allegedly took: several people noted that they shared my opinion of those people who essentially deify the Amiga (or whatever machine they use) and assault any one who dares criticize the object of their veneration. Obviously I tend to agree with these latter comments. Perhaps you expressed this sad state of affairs best when you said "as owners of a dying format, some of us do tend to get a little over-protective". It just could be that the unwillingness to listen to constructive criticism with an open mind has led to what you obviously perceive as a terminal condition. * * * Professional typographers have been using "proportional" typefaces to set colums of data for the past couple of centuries. It was actually the typewriter and then the computer that introduced the concept of monospaced type because of the limitations of the underlying mechanisms. ("proportional" is actually a misnomer. Because of the nature of typesetting technology, the slug on which the character was cast would always be just as wide as the character itself in order to provide proper visual spacing.) Selection of the appropriate typeface and the use of suitable application software will allow you to set visually appealing columns of data without need of mono-spaced faces. In Microsoft Word, QuarkXpress, Aldus Pagemaker and other programs, there are tab delineators for decimal points as well as right-justified entries. Usually these are more than adequate for the task. You might want to take a look at "The QuarkXpress Book" by David Blatner for a really good narrative on setting columnar text. Although specifically dedicated to Quark, the techniques Blatner describes can be used with any sophisticated page layout or word processing program. * * * Finally, in regard to your comments about having to restrict my speech in order to avoid stepping on the toes of potential customers – well, I have no illusions about being able to please all the people all the time. My comments about the Amiga OS represent my opinions to which I am most certainly entitled, as you are to yours. If anyone is going to judge my product on the basis of what I personally think about some other product, there isn't much I can or would do about it. Guess I'm just not a big fan of attempting to punish other people because they hold opinions contrary to my own. But to each their own, as they say.