Re: Tcom-like functionality in Unix?

From: John Sequeira (john_seq@hotmail.com)
Date: 12/11/02 

From: john_seq@hotmail.com (John Sequeira)
Date: 10 Dec 2002 15:51:29 -0800

Cameron,

I am guilty of muddling Unix and Windows. I have on many different
occasions had to deploy Windows web applications that rendered reports
in various formats, particularly MS-Office variants .doc and .xls.
When I say "it's incredibly bad practice ...", I really meant to say
that MS-Office desktop apps in particular are a really bad idea to
have on Windows servers due to their notoriety as virus vectors, lack
of stability, resource consumption etc. Also, keeping up with the
weekly patches
to Windows 2K/XP which require reboots is painful enough without
adding Office patches to the routine.

I don't feel this bias is nearly as applicable to the Unix side (hence
my
muddling). Although I have less experience there, I get the sense
that not too many people worry about installing Mutt, AbiWord or
Gnumeric on their centrally administered hosts, because with X that's
more-or-less how they were meant to be run anyway.

John Sequeira
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103492/