🚀 go-pugleaf

I want to respond to several comments and questions posted recently
regarding the Windows version. As you know, the Windows project is taking us
much longer than we expected. We had intended to ship the program during the
first half of 1994, but failed to meet that deadline.

First of all, I want to apologize for the delay. I know that there are a lot
of people out there who have been waiting for a long time and we are truly
sorry that we cannot deliver the program earlier. I think that we made a
mistake by giving out an expected release date. Our projection was based on
our development experience on DOS and Mac, and we were convinced at that
time that weUd be able to meet the deadline. We were wrong. Windows has
proved to be a very tricky development environment. Indeed, weUve been
humbled.

So when is the Windows version going to be released? We have two top
programmers working on it full time. We have a working version that we hope
to turn into a beta version, but feel that we shouldnUt repeat the mistake
of giving out a date. The truth is that although things look pretty rosy
right now, the developmnt may still take us longer than we expect.

About Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows. Understandably, users want the current
program to be directly compatible with this word processor. The thing to
realize, however, is that a RpatchS that will make our DOS program read and
write Word 6 documents is a programming task of at least six months (IUm
giving out time estimates again...)  So do we take one of our Windows
programmers off the Windows project to develop an interim DOS solution that
will delay the Windows version even more? It was a tough decision, but we
decided not to do this, but instead, apply all of our resources to
developing a Windows version that will be compatible with Word 6.

(Some technical background about the last paragraph for those who are
interested: we canUt develop Word 6 compatibility for both DOS and Windows
at the same time, since the Word 6 file format is an OLE document. In order
to read and write Word 6 documents directly, a program must incorporate OLE
program elements which are not available for DOS applications.)

I hope that at least one fact is clear: we are fully committed to Windows.
We are working hard to get out a really good piece of software and we are
very excited about what we have achieved so far. I realize that all this is
not very satisfactory for someone whoUs been waiting for so long, but I
thought you still might be interested to know where things stand.

Richard Niles
President