[Info-vax] IE8 got me too :-( Sorry Jeff.

[JF Mezei]

Richard Maher wrote:

> Yes, you're right again; no IPsec! "That's where we can save time, money,
> and effort. The rest of the IT world just aren't as clever as us." :-(


IPsec is not a "Digital" issue. It is an HP issue. And it has nothing to
do with a healthy VMS, it is simply a reflection of HP's position on VMS.

Back in the heydays of VMS, it is true that Digital had many
"extensions". However, one would need to consider how many of such
extensions did eventually make it into standards.

Digital was a pionner in providing accented character support in ASCII
and terminals. And its DEC Multinational Character Set did eventually
become ISO-Latin-1 standard (with a could of changes).

So, for a while, DEC's VT220 were ASCII with "proprietary" extensions
which later became standard. Apple also had their proprietary extensions
which didn't go anywhere. So did Data Ganeral, and of course IBM Eb's
See Dick.

DEC's additions to ASCII were there to fill a need that was not
fulfilled by the old ASCII character set.  And this was done at a time
where interoperability between vendors was not a requirement.

You used DEC terminals, DEC software and DEC printers, so you were
assured that your french language document printed properly. Or that
your Page Maker document written on a Mac using Apple's proprietary
character set would print properly on a postscript printer since Apple
provided the proper font mappings.

However, with the advent of "open" systems, interoperability became a
requirement and you could no longer start to add your extensions as you
wished because you needed to ensure stuff worked on multiple platforms.

If you are runnning an all microsoft shop, then you could use microsoft
proprietary extensions to HTML to your heart's content. The problem lies
in the fact that those shops started to use non standard HTML to speak
to the outside world, without respect for standards that allowed to
interoperability. And the goal was to convince people to move to IE to
make sure you could use such web sites.