The pros and cons of revivalism.

My thougths on the subject?

First of all, anyone is free to say whatever you like.
Second this "Anti-Manifesto" had an agressive tone, almost childish.

Let's see some points I remember:

-He complains about using the term "a group of MSX Developers", that this includes him
on the manifest;
Well.. how it should be? A group does not include everyone, is just a group, not all groups.

-He accuses Brazilians of not knowing anything about ASCII and to be criticizing whitouth reasons.
If ASCII doesnt have even an English page, How we are supposed to know something.
Yeah, there are that old presentation - which is way old and was made when they had
nothing on their hands (not even MSX Player was ready) so what is correct about all that
noone knows. And more, that presentation is very vague.

And later on in the same subject he says noone who currently develop for MSX asks it's
users how to do it. Now, this is plain wrong. Ademir Carchano not only asks people what
they want, but changes his projects accordinly. For example: Ademir has a mail list just for
everyone who bought CIEL3++, where everything about the computer is discussed. The final word allways comes from Ademir, but our opnions count. One pure example is the CIEL3++ CPU - it was planned by Ademir to use the Z180. We convinced him to use Z382, because not only it is faster then Z180, but also handles the memory better.

This is just what I remember from my head; there were much more things I disagree in there. But I agree he has the rights to publish what he thinks anywhere.

And BTW: I do now want to discuss it any further. I'm too busy with my life, too many problems, I cant waste time on this. I will just continue to make my MSX games quietly here.

Lets put sone controverse in this topic....

I like that project like the CIEL3++ exists, maybe one day there will be more of them.
It is a chance that Hardware developers like sunrise ( and many others )exist also, tuning your favorite computer can be funny.

Stating that MRC is a more official place to discuss than an other is not really 'elegant', i would even say it is a bit 'sufficient', and does not seem efficient at all.

Project like MSX revival does not bring to me anything new or fun in my MSX point view, for the moment.
I dont have any judgement to bring on that topic, bad or wrong.
Maybe, if the MSX one chip ever exists and some motherboard are proposed, it could be interesting. I would consider it as an old tuned MSX.

But lets face it , most of the reasons we like using MSX are some good 'souvenirs' with it or the challenge to get the best of this 8 bit machine , it is like a game.

If then you can get an Msx as powerfull as 10 years ago PC , it is a totally different story, maybe some people will have some fun with this maybe not, but it is a different story in my mind.Eventhough I agree it is funny to see some,interest back what has been MSX.
If i want to play really realistic games or do some internet the Pc is there ( re-inventing the wheel ... )

If you guys really want to take this new wave , why not ? , one advice : start learning japanese ...

Back to the discussion.

Stating that MRC is a more official place to discuss than an other is not really 'elegant', i would even say it is a bit 'sufficient', and does not seem efficient at all.I'm not saying it's a more (or the most) official place to discuss. But it makes more sense to discuss these things on large international platforms like the MSX Mailinglist and -indeed- the MRC. I heard there were huge discussions on the Anti-manifest on the brazilian mailinglist. I regret it that those discussions aren't around in English on the web. What I was trying to say yesterday - such discussions are not useful when you discuss them with people who mainly think alike. You need the opinions of people who think otherwise as well. Furthermore, discussions on international platforum will make several semi-separated communitues (Brazil, Europe and Japan) understand each other better. Like I said in another thread, the MSX Community isn't that bad at all. Contrary, it rocks!

About the anti-manifest being 'childish' or too direct. Well, it was a draft and due to a bit of miscommunication it was out in the open before it should have. I assume Grauw (and some other people) will polish this draft and host a final version somewhere else. Documents like these are interesting foundations for discussion.

I think many of the anti-revival feelings (and the responses to it) are caused by misunderstanding and miscommunication. Also people are making facts out of assumptions, and create their own assumptions on what they read somewhere else. Also a lot of arguments used are terribly outdated or just totally wrong. (Like I said before.. it's just not right to say the MSX Association does not want the input of users outside of Japan. And it's just not right to say the MSX Association does not want to release products outside of Japan. To me it's perfectly understandable they start in Japan however . If I startted a wooden shoes factory, what do you think is the best way to create money and grow? To build billions and billions of wooden shoes first and send them all over the world to millions of shops and ask them to sell them? Or to start small and start creating a few wooden shoes in a place where they are most likely to be baught, and invest my earnings in expansion?) As an extra - ASCII did not forget 'us' when creating the MSX2+ or MSX turboR standard. Those were worldwide standards. Philips, Sony and all the other hardware producers did. Microsoft did. (it's still fun to blame Microsoft, isn't it ? )

For the past few years the MRC has been working very hard to make the site as international as possible. We use fairly simple English, we use clear links in our newsposts and we try to bring all the news. I can say it's harder for us to get Brazil-news than to get Japanese news. Thanks go a lot to Slotman who - despite of his busy life - maintains the MSXFiles which gives us most of our Brazil newsfeeds. Our next step will be offering multilingual content. I'm not sure when we are able to offer this functionality (it's already there but not working the way I want it to), but we definately need some motivated translators for each language. Languages that have our priorities are Brazilian-Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish.

Maybe, even after editing, I should put a disclaimer in: "try not to get offended and take a look at my actual arguments and try to understand how I feel". Or something ;p.

(and that kinda goes for this last post aswell, please don't get mad, I'm just stating the facts as I know them)

~Grauw

ic, i read some tough replies... perhaps snout deleted those. too bad