I absolutely agreed with your assessment back then, and I mostly agree with it now as I rather bemoan the slow loss of the 80 column standard over the years as it's fallen to a bevy of incompatible standards for displaying variable width fonts with the only saving grace being the near universality of HTML - even though it tends to render differently in just about every implementation.

ePub, interestingly enough, seems to be a rather competent attempt at a standardized ebook format, and is currently supported (in DRM and non-DRM varieties) by every ebook device on the market except for the Kindle - which Amazon wants all to themselves. Even some non-ePub devices have been upgraded to work with it via firmware updates.

Maybe one of these days I'll have to put on my 80 column evangelist shoes and see if I can talk the openinkpot fellows into supporting it in a simple and straightforward manner, but for the moment, it's just not there.