xCards versus HTML

[Robert Brenstein]

>Backward compatibility is more viable (sustainable)
>with stacks than with HTML pages. A stack is
>equivalent to a complete site, yet far more flexible
>than the dozens or hundreds of corresponding web
>pages. A stack can/will be scripted to re-purpose the
>existing content, casting the content in several
>forms: HTML, XML, textfiles, database records,
>reports, CGI program; individually, or any mix that
>you wish. New formats can also be scripted as they
>become available, relevant, popular... without fussing
>with the content at all and without disrupting the
>other formats either.
>
>I agree with you that people do upgrade when they have
>a good reason and a reasonable of success. It's
>evolution! My conviction is that we have the
>upper-hand in terms of potential, but I suppose that
>we the xCard community has not made its case
>persuasively enough. Not yet that is!  Ignorance of
>the superiority of our xCard approach must be
>countered with more communication, and hopefully my
>last 3 messages to this list have contributed to this,
>albeit in a very small way. You can quote my
>ramblings, if you wish, in other forums. As it is, I
>am preaching to the converted, eh!

Hmm, you seem to forget one little detail. MC is not a stagnant 
environment and evolves as well, creating compatibility issues of its 
own as new versions are coming out. A trivial example of something 
very real (I ran into this myself just recently): if you happen to 
use 2.4.3 and use the "slash" constant that it supports, your stack 
won't work correctly with 2.4.1.  Will you expect everyone to upgrade 
to the newest MC always? This is equivalent of asking everyone to 
abandon Netscape 4.x and move to 7 (I think they are still more 
people using 4.x than 7). The bottom line: things are not that 
trivial in wide open world :)

Ronert