Office standards not open at all

generic_user_id

It looks like this license is similar to the one of the often praised PDF format. You're allowed to write software that supports the format and the specs of the format are readily available, but extending the document is prohibited. At least this way you don't get incompatibilities between versions of the XML Office format. If everybody's allowed to write software that uses the format then lock-in is almost impossible. And if the specs are available the 3rd party software can be 100% compatible, which is a big improvement.

Stephane Rodriguez

Xml fixes that EOL thing, in addition to encodings. But to anybody looking to write a normal Word document why not stick to RTF? (each Windows OS comes with Wordpad in the accessories, which is just fine for that). The real trouble with the new Office 2006 file formats is that they are a departure from today's MS Office file formats anyway, so why not budget on migrating towards a cross-platform standard implementation instead. By the way, MS Office 2006 won't even install on Windows 2000 (or Windows XP, XP SP1). To end users, Office 2006 means a new file format hell to deal with. By making it even more graphics intensive (GDI+ is known to be slow), they are going to have people forced to upgrade their PCs. I have not a single doubt about where the Office documents are headed : be effectively optimized for a Windows Vista-only world. (even the Mac Office version is a casualty as exemplified by the Mac B.U. being part of the game division). Further, as I have said in several places, Microsoft wants you to believe that the file format war is over and that in the modern world file formats don't matter anymore. Unfortunately, they are showing everyday by adding their own extensions to everything that file formats don't matter as long as you are using theirs. In fact, the issue is not only about layout mismatch or about anyone willing to use their own declarative Xml to express Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and so on. It's that Microsoft is adding capabilities like collaboration which only works with say Sharepoint 2006 in a Windows-only world (both clients and servers). None of these protocols are publicly documented. Telling a lot about how shortsighted an initiative it can be.

Paul Watson

Ugh. EOL is what tripped me up a few times while setting Apache up on Lemon. Thankfulyl Notepad2 makes it easy to change. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!

Brian Delahunty

Stephane Rodriguez. wrote:

Xml fixes that EOL thing, in addition to encodings.

I was talking about viewing files. You write an XML file on windows using notepad (or whatever text editor you want) and it still gets Windows EOL chars. Open that xml file up on a MAC and the windows EOL chars are still there. So XML does not solve the problem (it's just text) until you bring XML parsers into the fray. Regards, Brian Dela :-) Blog^ Co-author of The Outlook Answer Book... Go on, order^ it today!

Nish Nishant

Hey Stephane Good to see you posting here again :-)

realJSOP

Does that honestly surprise you at all? ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

Paul Watson

Not really but you know me, ever hopeful, always optimistic. Still, MS did release SSE under a Creative Commons license which was quite surprising. Either the devs snuck that one under the radar or there is a hidden motive. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!

leppie

Paul Watson wrote:

Thankfulyl Notepad2 makes it easy to change.

xacc.ide needs no changing :) it defaults to \n and strips \r, but when saving it, the underlying streamwriter automatically appends depending on platform. xacc.ide-0.1 released! Download and screenshots

Paul Watson

That is handy but see, I edit my apache2 config files in Windows and then fling em over to the Linux box. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Colib and ilikecameras. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!

Stephane Rodriguez

Ya know, I never miss an opportunity to throw a stab at Redmond. These days though, they seem to offer tons of such legitimate reasons to do so. Check out this bonner : http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2005/11/30/498288.aspx. That's ridiculous. -- modified at 11:31 Wednesday 30th November, 2005