Robert's Profile

Member since March 6, 2007

  • Name

    Robert Millan

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  1. Comment - Microsoft: Office Format War Over

    (Mar 6, 2007 - 2:33 PM)

    > - Those formats like ".doc" WERE and ARE publically
    > documented, despite numerous claims to the contrary by
    > Microsoft haters. (You can download the documentation
    > yourself, right now if you want!)

    I once opened a .doc in OO and it didn't display right. You mean this is OO's fault? Oh, you mean the parser wasn't written by MS, it was someone else's code? When you actualy want to push a standard with honesty, the first thing you do is writing a sample implementation in non-copylefted license, so that everyone can grab it. Think of Ogg Vorbis for example, or X11.

  2. Comment - Microsoft: Office Format War Over

    (Mar 6, 2007 - 2:29 PM)

    Tell me a single software niche in which Microsoft hasn't attempted to diverge from existing standard, impose their own, and make it difficult for competition to be compatible with them.

    Kerberos, IE-HTML, DirectX, .DOC... there's a long history that teaches us what we can expect. If they're really in another direction now, then it's their responsability to actualy _do_ something to gain credibility.

  3. Comment - Microsoft: Office Format War Over

    (Mar 6, 2007 - 2:24 PM)

    Which just means you get the same interoperability problems than with DOC, but with another name.

    Let's face it: Microsoft just wants to embrace, extend and extinguish. If they want to prove this is not true, I challenge them to make ODF their default.

  4. Comment - Microsoft: Office Format War Over

    (Mar 6, 2007 - 2:19 PM)

    It's a trap! It's obvious they're offering this plugin only to extend dominance of their standard. Once OOXML rules the world, they can take it away.

    Some thoughts:
    - did they give us a 64-bit version? we'll need this really soon for the upcoming transition. Oh, perhaps they don't want us to carry on with OOXML support when we migrate to 64-bit?
    - where's the source? how can you claim to attempt to standarise something if you don't offer a free software implementation?