On Mar 3, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Barry Traver wrote:
Joe,
I realize this, but if you change the creator and type, it would
still open
in Word, right?
It would launch Word, and Word would be told to open it, which
would then puke on the file because the bytes inside are not what
a Word document would be. At best, it will display a nice error
saying, "This is not a Word document." At worst, it would
actually attempt to open the thing, and either crash or produce a
document full of garbage.
NOT TRUE (at least in Windows - what you say may perhaps be true on
the Mac)!
It's dangerous to make logical assumptions without doing the actual
experiments. Aristotle logically argued that if something is twice
as heavy, it falls twice as fast, but Newton (and many others) by
experiment showed that what is "logical" is not necessarily true.
I just changed the file extension of an RB .xml file to .doc, and
Microsoft Word loaded it with no problems and no complaints. I
also loaded the original .xml file into Microsoft Word, and
likewise there were no problems and no complaints.
Since, of course, an .xml file is a plain text (non-styled) file,
that's the way it looks when it is loaded into Microsoft Word,
whatever file extension you give the file. Word did NOT ask me
anything about extensions or conversions or anything else. It just
loaded in both files with no complaint about the fact that the file
claiming to be a Word .doc file really wasn't, but it treated the
file as if it were a plain (non-styled).text file.
BUT it gets much more interesting. I also changed the extension of
an .rtf file to .doc, and when I loaded it into Word, not only did
Microsoft Word not ask me anything about extensions or conversions
or anything else, but also it treated the file (with a filename
ending in ".doc") as an RTF file, maintaining the font size and
type, the formatting, etc. when it loaded it in. Microsoft Word
did absolutely nothing to warn the user that it wasn't really an
actual Word document but actually an RTF wolf in .doc sheep's
clothing, so to speak.
In Windows at least, Word did not "puke on the file." Nor did it
"display a nice error saying, 'This is not a Word document.'" Nor
did it "either crash or produce a document full of garbage. "
I agree, and Word behaves similarly on Mac. From File/Open, it is
very proficient at reading files without complaint for what they are
regardless of name, extension, or icon. Of course there is a
difference between creating a file that Word can open correctly, and
'creating a Word document if one doesn't have MSOffice' as the OP
proposed. The former is easy but the latter is best handled by saving
the opened file from Word. :-)
Best,
Jack
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