This isn't that trivial. If WP was blown out of the market by Word in illegal fashion, billions of dollars are at stake. And more importantly, if a legal precedent is set appropriately, we could avoid another Microsoft - or something like that in an industry that we have yet to imagine.

So all this is over those products using undocumented Win 3.x DLL calls, which were altered or removed in Win95.

Should not have been a deadlocked jury - it should have been dismissed. Microsoft only guarantees documented calls will remain. App developers who choose to use undocumented calls that are meant for the consumption of the OS (and therefore likely to change with new versions of the OS) can't complain when they go away.

The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing. Instead, they bent over backwards to provide a unique, different UI from the standard Windows UI to differentiate their products, and got burned by coding too close to the metal to make that happen.

Ho hum.

bronyaur1: This isn't that trivial. If WP was blown out of the market by Word in illegal fashion, billions of dollars are at stake. And more importantly, if a legal precedent is set appropriately, we could avoid another Microsoft - or something like that in an industry that we have yet to imagine.

They didn't remove the DLLs to burn the makers of Wordperfect. Wordperfect was using calls they should not have touched in the first place. Win95 was a step between the 16-bit Win3.1 and 32-bit WinNT. Microsoft made appropriate changes to undocumented DLLs to accommodate the drastic changes in the OS. They were under no requirement to maintain some arcane calls intended for the Win3.x OS to use, but used by a handful of apps to change the user interface to their own liking (i.e. make their apps work like their DOS counterparts did).

sarah_t_s: LesserEvil:
The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing.

What if you couldn't? That's also one of the arguments leveled at Microsoft; they made use of undocumented calls so that their word processor (in this case) loaded faster, worked 'better' and so on.

I'm guessing your too young to actually remember the mid-90's and Microsoft's behaviour... both then and now.

THIS.

MasterSFV: Never mind yer MS Word, WordPerfect, etc the best text editor is vi

I'm sorry, but you misspelled Emacs.

LesserEvil: So all this is over those products using undocumented Win 3.x DLL calls, which were altered or removed in Win95.

Should not have been a deadlocked jury - it should have been dismissed. Microsoft only guarantees documented calls will remain. App developers who choose to use undocumented calls that are meant for the consumption of the OS (and therefore likely to change with new versions of the OS) can't complain when they go away.

The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing. Instead, they bent over backwards to provide a unique, different UI from the standard Windows UI to differentiate their products, and got burned by coding too close to the metal to make that happen.

Ho hum.

The use of undocumented calls is one of the reasons Netscape sued MS because IIS apps had a performance advantage using those calls.

Still underscores the base face that MS apps have a market advantage over competitors. They can add calls to get an advantage and remove them when it hurts others.
LesserEvil: So all this is over those products using undocumented Win 3.x DLL calls, which were altered or removed in Win95.

Should not have been a deadlocked jury - it should have been dismissed. Microsoft only guarantees documented calls will remain. App developers who choose to use undocumented calls that are meant for the consumption of the OS (and therefore likely to change with new versions of the OS) can't complain when they go away.

The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing. Instead, they bent over backwards to provide a unique, different UI from the standard Windows UI to differentiate their products, and got burned by coding too close to the metal to make that happen.

Ho hum.

LesserEvil: So all this is over those products using undocumented Win 3.x DLL calls, which were altered or removed in Win95.

Should not have been a deadlocked jury - it should have been dismissed. Microsoft only guarantees documented calls will remain. App developers who choose to use undocumented calls that are meant for the consumption of the OS (and therefore likely to change with new versions of the OS) can't complain when they go away.

The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing. Instead, they bent over backwards to provide a unique, different UI from the standard Windows UI to differentiate their products, and got burned by coding too close to the metal to make that happen.

Ho hum.

sarah_t_s: LesserEvil:
The really dumb thing is that they probably used undocumented code when they probably could have coded it "the right way" using documented calls and accomplished the same thing.

What if you couldn't? That's also one of the arguments leveled at Microsoft; they made use of undocumented calls so that their word processor (in this case) loaded faster, worked 'better' and so on.

I'm guessing your too young to actually remember the mid-90's and Microsoft's behaviour... both then and now.

No, I'm plenty old enough... I've been a professional programmer since 1982... and I currently do enterprise development on the world's largest intranet; but undocumented calls are undocumented calls. any programmer who uses them should know that support for them can evaporate overnight. Trust me... I do a lot of "close to the metal" programming in my current work, and I'm quite familiar with the many gotchas between OS platforms (which is as big a problem today as it was 15 years ago)

As for the whole "Microsoft used them to their advantage..." nonsense, fine... but obviously these aren't the same calls, are they? IF Microsoft took away those performance enhancing calls to the detriment of their own applications, then it affects them, as well.

Mostly I suspect Wordperfect used hooks into system calls to circumvent the normal UI behavior, which breaks a LOT of things people like having with Windows, because they short-circuit the mid-level UI stuff. That's great to get the key-combinations that you used in DOS (and locked users into with familiarity and expensive training), but Windows was about standardizing the UI for the user, which is a good thing for those users (bad thing for app developers trying to lock users into their own UIs).

By defending the makers of Wordperfect, you are arguing that learning new key combinations for a specific suite of apps is a good thing. Say what you want about Microsoft's business practices, but they had it right on the UI front.... standardizing was good for anybody that made a good product. Users wouldn't need new training every time a new app came out, or simply to use an "outside" app from the suite they were used to using. Wordperfect and it's ilk broke that paradigm so users could still use their apps like the DOS versions, keeping training fragmented. They weren't doing their users any favors by keeping them in the stone age of personal computing.

Bacontastesgood: LesserEvil: Users wouldn't need new training every time a new app came out, or simply to use an "outside" app from the suite they were used to using.

Yeah, it's awesome how every time a new version of Office comes out I know how to use it right away because Microsoft has carefully thought about consistency in the UI.

/facepalm

I didn't say Microsoft was smart enough, in recent years, to follow their own good research. Of course, as bad as Ribbons are, they don't require using undocumented APIs to work.

Ribbons are an abomination, and the idiots that pushed that crap need to be put out of our misery.

It doesn't change my original point. The makers of Wordperfect gambled that the undocumented calls they used to (essentially) break the Windows UI and make it do their own bidding, and it failed when the OS was completely overhauled. Win 3.1 != Win95. It also made the leap to a true 32-bit OS much easier when people flocked to Win2k and XP. This wasn't about Microsoft "sabotaging" Wordperfect. The idea, frankly, is laughable. Wordperfect's days were numbered by 1995/96... Most people who didn't want to join the borg went with AmiPro, but Microsoft's "Internet golden era" brought a lot of people over to the dark side with some solid products - and it had as much to do with the competition failing to catch up in the UI as it did with Microsoft delivering products that worked for most people. They certainly didn't need to "sabotage" anybody.

The big problem with using the undocumented calls is that they worked the old way if you called them from a MS program and broke in random ways when WP used them. If you added WP to the list of compatible programs, everything worked fine but there was no consistent way to keep it in the list.

Thorndyke Barnhard: beerbaron: Thorndyke Barnhard: Novell? Wasn't Wordperfect by Corel?

It is now, but Novell had it for a while.

Huh! I did not know that.

And it was its own company before Novell bought it.