Word specs were actually released - was Re: AbiWord 0.9.2

[W. Wayne Liauh]

Yes, some, indeed most, of the "obvious" Word specs have been disclosed 
by Microsoft.  But Microsoft has withheld enough of these specs, 
especially when they deal with certain "important" features of 
Word/Excel, that it is impossible to develop a fully satisfactory 
filter.  Indeed, pre-XP version of Microsoft Office don't even open some 
of the XP files very well.

Hopefully, the highly anticipated move (by Microsoft as well as almost 
everybody else) into XML should improve the situation.  However, I am 
afraid that Microsoft will bring an extended XML format, and we will be 
in the same boat again.



Jeff Mings wrote:

> Actually, M$ has released the specs to Word, and Excel, I believe.  I 
> don't have the URL, but this was referenced on a trustworthy news site 
> (probably /.) that contained the link to the info on M$'s own site. 
> This question of closed file specs comes up a lot, and I don't want 
> Linux users to be seen as misinformed rabid detractors of M$, when we 
> are certainly very-well-informed rabid detractors of M$.  ;)
>
> -Jeff Mings
>
>
> W. Wayne Liauh wrote:
>
>> Since Word uses a proprietary format and Microsoft never releases its 
>> spec (I never could understand why our government allows such a 
>> proprietary format to become a standard), my experience is, no filter 
>> does a satisfactory job.  For simple documents, the coversion is 
>> usually OK.  But if your Word documents contain heavy formatting, 
>> such as tables, headers/footers, text boxes, etc., then the 
>> conversion usually fails.
>>
>> Let me re-phrase my question, why do we allow our government to adopt 
>> a such proprietary format to become a standard?
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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