Avalon on Windows XP?

Mary Jo Foley: "Microsoft is expected to admit that it is 'decoupling' its Avalon presentation system from Longhorn so that it can run on one or more existing versions of Windows."

If true, this is fantastic news. It would be impossible even today for us to use GDI+ if it hadn't been redistributable onto Windows 2000 and even NT, and it will be impossible for us to use Avalon for a long time if it is Longhorn-only. Which, if other ISVs come to the same conclusion, would mean that even Longhorn users wouldn't realise the benefits of Avalon.

I understand the argument that Avalon demands changes all the way down to the bottom of the stack, but I for one would be more than willing to accept compromises in Avalon's capabilities in order to have it on Windows XP -- better to have a good UI layer that I can deploy than a great one that I can't.

The library of unwritten books

The Library of Unwritten Books: "In Portsmouth recently, one day saw the [librarians] collect stories from a man with cerebral palsy about education, a man who went on an anti-Hitler pilgrimage to Austria, someone who had done children's illustrations of a family of conkers but not yet written the story, and an author of Chinese philosophical poetry."