I disagree. You pointed out that Infocom were able to settle on group
wide standards because they were all working together, 9 to 5. Now,
it's going to be a lot tougher for our current crop of IF people to get
together and agree on a set of standards, but I believe it is possible.
What is needed is some kind of workshop: either a real life gathering,
or an online real-time meeting, or even just a week when everyone
agrees to contribute to an ongoing discussion in the newsgroup.
However it's done, the basic need must be to focus on identifying a set
of fairly universal IF standards. Obviously, we're not all going to
agree on a complete set of standards, nor adhere to them rigidly, but
it would be a huge step in the right direction.
-- Ivan