Am 05.08.2011 22:22, schrieb Eric Hoch:
Hi Armin,
Am Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:01:52 +0200 schrieb Armin Le Grand:
Am 05.08.2011 18:47, schrieb Dennis E. Hamilton:
The only problem with [2] is that it assumes conversion is
possible/permissible. That is not always the case. Now, I do
not know there is anyone who has that problem and is (or will
soon be) unable to run older software that accesses those
formats, but we do need to be careful in considering this.
The current 3.2 version would be the last one to have both, how
ling will it be installable and runnable on evolving systems? Can
only be guessed, but usually it's another 7-8 years.
I have no numbers, but how many people still have files in old
formats? With introduction ODF years ago it was preselected as
the standard.
I don't know how it is in the country you live in but here in
Germany documents, especially tax relevant ones from companies,
must be archived for 10 years or even longer. 2011 minus 10 years
makes it 2001 and in 2001 there was no ODF.
Germany, too :-)
At another place I worked before I had a request to open a Works
2.0 file which hadn't been used for ages but contained informations
that years later were needed. At the time of creation of those
files nobody thought that there would be a time where there would
be no MS Works that will read old 2.0 formats or that you would
have even trouble to find a Computer old enough to run MS-DOS or
Win 95 not to mention the actions it took to get a version of MS
Works that would read Works 2.0 formats and convert them into a
format that todays MS Office version would read without totally
messing up the layout to a point were the file unusable.
What does this show? Others behave much worse as we would do. If the
first AOO release will be the last with binfilters and we assume a
runnalble/installable state of 5-10 years (depending on OS, unforseeable
progress, etc...) this will be fine from my POV.
When you load old files, change and safe them you are invited to
use ODF for the file save.
That's true but in some cases, see above, you must preserve not
only the content of the document but also how it looked and the
digital signature because otherwise there is no proof that you
didn't edit it. Worst case would be that you convert the document
with a batch run into ODF, it reads 1000 instead of 100, which you
don't notice, and convert this in a signed PDF/A. This of course
can happen also when you use the original StarOffice format but you
would have eliminated one possible source of errors in the first
conversion into ODF.
One more reason not to use the most current AOO in five years, but an
older one which is installable and capable of doing the job. I agree
that this would be safer for conversion anyways.
Noone tests binfilter nowadays when during version progress the
underlying libraries (tools, vcl, etc) get changed. This does have
influence on binfilter, but as long as noone using the old formats
stumbles over one (and reports it), it will just stay hidden. Thats what
I meant with that it's even dangerous to keep these last, low-level
dependencies.
The office was not even as widely
spread as it is now before ODF was added as default format, thus
potentially much less documents in the old formats were created,
compared to ODF.
I think something like old file formats have to be deprecated one
day, and in my opinion there was a quite long
conversion/transition period now. As others already mentioned,
binfilter is not even installed by default for 3.2 (if I remember
correctly), and I have not seen any complaints about that yet.
To All: Does anyone use one of the old binary formats or knows
anyone who does actively nowdays? Please answer if you know about
something like that, this would be valuable input in this
discussion.
Not used actively but needed in order to open old documents which
cannot be converted into ODF because of the above reason that you
cannot rule out that you make 100 out of 1000 or the other way
round.
Use the last version doing both, the first AOO release as it looks. It's
not even released, so there will be some time where it will be installable.
One concrete question: DO you have documents in the old formats or is
this just hypothetical..?
Eric Hoch
Sincerely,
Armin
--
ALG
