Re: A good set of generic questions...

• Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 05:41:29 PDT
• From:
  Matthew Hapke <mahapke@adsnet.com>
• Cc: moo-cows@parc.xerox.com
• Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 07:42 PM 5/20/96 PDT, you wrote:
>  Although I like some things about the Pueblo implementation (by the
>company "Chaco"), and their "scrolling HTML" is kind of interesting, it has
>three problems that I see. One, the client requires you to connect through
>the Chaco server, which I view as a sneaky way for Chaco to set itself up as
>the gateway to MOOs that don't belong to it, and also as a serious security
>risk unless you don't mind the folks at Chaco having access to all your MOO
>communications (do all client communications go through their server
>first?).  Two, Unix and Mac users are left out in the cold because there is
>no Pueblo client version for them.
>  Three, you become dependent on the folks at Chaco to continue supporting
>and upgrading their client.  We're talking about a company too small to put
>out Mac and Unix releases and if they go under then your fancy webbed MOO is
>suddenly a dinosaur.  They implement MOO-client communication through
>several very unusual "x-command" attributes embedded into the HTML tags, and
>there's never going to be any support for those outside Chaco, as far as I
>can tell.  Web-MOO implementations that are browser independent, or at least
>support both Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer (90% of the people
>out there use one or the other), are preferable because you then have
>several multi-million dollar companies developing your MOO's client for you.
>That's sort of nice.  Chaco has gone the route of discouraging compatibility
>by implementing a system that really can't be reconciled with anything but
>their own proprietary client.  I know retro is always sort of cool, but,
>well, how 70's of them.
>                                     Eric  (EricM at BioMOO and Diversity
>University)
>P.S. Yes, I'm dissing the competition. But I trust y'all are smart enough to
>judge things based on their features in any case.  I look forward to hearing
>a slick rebuttal soon.  :)

First, you are right, I first used the WOO stuff on those machines, and yes
it was laggy, and I really haven't been back to a Web MOO since.. So I will
have to re-evaluate my position on Web MOOs being laggy ;)

The new version of Pueblo doesn't have you log into their server anymore,
that was removed.  Also, in rebute, I would say that hey! It is still better
then some homegrown client, and it works well and allows you to upgrade a
MOO to use multimedia very easily.  It has none of the "software" lag that
netscape does, ie waiting to load this or that, waiting for the server to
reconnect, and send stuff, disconnecting, etc.. All that is gone. 

Your point about the small company is a good one however.  I asked them
about this and they said they hae a Mac version on the way, ad they are
talking with a few people about doing a unix version, but right now there is
still just a window 95 and a win3.1 version.  We will have to see if they
are exiting enough to stay afloat in net land...

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