RE: [Patents] epoline file inspection not working

["Gerben Gieling" <Gerben.Gieling@synthon.nl>]

So Roland, you will recieve this twice since I hit the wrong button the
first time.

A small correction to this message.

I was not involved in developing the code. I volunteered as a beta
tester in the non-public beta test.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roland Orre [mailto:orre@nada.kth.se] ;
> Sent: February 10, 2003 13:21
> To: PILCH Hartmut
> Cc: epo@mlist.austria.eu.net; patents@aful.org; 
> intprop-l@topica.com; horns@ipjur.com
> Subject: Re: [Patents] epoline file inspection not working
> 
> 
> I intended to use the http://www.epoline.org in my reference ;
> list on the
> web, but I would find it embarrasing to reference information 
> which may
> not be accessable for certain people because it's made browser
> dependent. This showing that I'm ignorant about the fact that 
> those who
> provide the information have not put effort into finding serious web
> developers or have not clearly communicated their policy or the
> importance of the service they provide to their web developers.
> 
> Most often, when some html code is not working in the browser 
> I'm using,
> I consider the information provided is not important for me. 
> However, in
> a case earlier when the access to the my company's bank 
> account stopped
> working then I got furious because I'm dependent on the service they
> provide. My bank's web site had worked for many years until they
> suddenly had changed something two years ago and a pop up 
> window told me
> that "I'm running the wrong operative system" (!?) (How about that,
> platform dependent checks in platform independent code...?) I spent a
> lot of time with them, threating to change bank if they didn't fix it.
> It took me almost two weeks of phone calls and mails (and they had
> several internal meetings) before they finally had cleared up the
> situation and the web site was working again.
> 
> It's especially scary when reading Gerben Gieling's comment. 
> Gerben was
> involved in the original EPO web code, and clearly Gerben is a serious
> developer who made the code browser independent. But later, when he
> was not involved any longer, the code was changed to become browser
> dependent.
> 
> How can a public service organization like EPO defend such a move?
> 
> >From my point of view it shows a mix of ignorance and naivity about
> the service being provided. 
> 
>       Best regards
>       Roland Orre
> 
> PS. I may use the http://www.epoline.org in my reference list anyway,
> but I'll add a *Warning* telling that the link may not work with all
> browsers. OK, I would never do this if the link was only working in
> Internet Explorer, but as the link works OK with e.g. Mozilla, which
> is the platform independent browser I'm mainly using, then I can
> use the link, otherwise it would be too offending to people.
> 
> 
> On Sun, 2003-02-09 at 16:04, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > At 
> > 
> >         http://www.epoline.org/
> > 
> > one can supposedly inspect the current state of an EPO patent.
> > 
> > Unfortunately I was, after a few attempts, not able to do this with
> > any patent, and at
> > 
> >         http://www.epoline.org/epoline/pfifaq.html
> > 
> > I find an FAQ which teaches me that I have to use the Microsoft
> > operating system platform with specific browsers that use specific
> > versions of the Java Virtual Machine.  I of course use none of these
> > but browsers like Konqueror, Opera and Lynx.
> > 
> > If the EPO's goal is to make information publicly accessible, why
> > can't you keep things simple and adhere to publicly specified
> > standards, such as HTML 4.0 (see www.w3c.org) ?
> > 
> > Meanwhile the problem about which I was complaining this 
> morning seems
> > to have been fixed, but the observation remains that espacenet.com
> > could have been made more transparent and robust.  Since epoline.org
> > is still in the beta phase, perhaps some bad design decisions of
> > espacenet.com could be avoided rather than repeated in even worse
> > form.
> > 
> > Btw, is intprop-l at topica com still operating ?
> > My postings didn't seem to arrive there and I received only one
> > mailing from AHH this year.
> -- 
> 
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