A slightly less aggressive answer: yes and no. If you want to be the number one word processor then you have to account for the fact that your formats will be kicking around for many (many!) years to come, and must always be portable. Going backwards is almost as significant - if only because they're so key to every organization on the planet that uses a computer.
That's why so many governments and libraries have moved to truely open standards - they will always be readable! It seems so simple, but with Microsoft, it's not assured that you will always be able to open your document. On Sep 29, 2:16 pm, Philip Arndt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Don't you think they have the right to release a document format that > isn't backward compatible after about 10 years with the other one? > I believe it allows them to add in numerous amounts of additional > features and signify to the user 'you need this version to run this'. > Ever experienced the pain of trying to run a .doc in word 97 when it > was created in 2003 and not saved "for 97" with nothing to give it > away other than trying to open it and failing? The .docx extension > would have been useful here! > > Happens with other products, but as soon as Microsoft do something, > they're "evil" I guess?? > > Phil > > On 29/09/2008, at 2:07 PM, Don Gould wrote: > > > > > Dave Lane wrote: > >> No, Microsoft's proprietary non-standard format DOCX is always > >> unacceptable. > > > It's *not* even acceptable as if you support closed source!!! > > > Sorry Dave... my DOCX comment really was just a frustrated troll > > about > > the fact that MS release stuff that's not backwards compatible. > > > As I understand it, you can read newer PDFs with older viewers, it > > just > > doesn't display the new meta data. > > > DOCX on the other hand can't even be opened and ships by default on > > newer machines. It's a really pain!!! > > > Cheers Don --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
