On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Joshua Lutes <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 5:52 PM, S. Dale Morrey <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> I don't understand what it is you don't understand, can you elaborate
>> your question please?
>>
>>
> I guess I don't understand why a person would say something like "M$ Turd".
> Tod Hansmann's suggestion of linux fanboism is probably spot on. It seems
> quite silly.
>
> I guess, maybe, is there something about the format that makes it so turdy?
Yeah, calling Microsoft products cutesy names like "M$ Turd" is silly,
and I hate it, but it's hardly the silliest or most annoying thing
that happens regularly on the PLUG list. Oh well. In the words of
Sartre, "Hell is other people."
Although I use MS Word frequently and I don't really have any
deep-seated philosophical opposition to it, it can be quite annoying
at times and I think I have probably sworn at it once or twice in
anger. People who want to read or write its file format have an
additional set of reasons to hate it, because the file format (as far
as I understand it, anyway) isn't so much a file format as it is a
serialization of the internal data structure of the memory
representation of the file. It's a totally reasonable thing to do, as
a programmer, because designing a good well-defined file format is
hard and it can restrict the feature development of the software that
uses it. Making it hard for Word Perfect or whatever to read or write
its files may or may not have been a bonus for them, back in the day,
but I don't think they cared one way or another about Linux reading or
writing their files enough for it to actually influence anything.
It's extremely easy for the Word programmers to read in their file
format, and they provide libraries and OLE-type stuff on Windows to
work with their files, so it's really only painful for stuff outside
of the Windows world that can't deal natively with the objects.
People give them crap about the file format all the time, but given
their market dominance, I don't begrudge them their freedom to do
whatever they want with the file format. Hanging on to standard
formats and compatibility and whatnot has its advantages, but it
creates remarkably nasty, disgusting, crufty messes over time. Witness
the rest of the Windows API and the x86 architecture as prime examples
of backwards-compatibility cruft. The ability to say, "screw it,
we're changing everything!" and get away with it can be a great thing,
once the initial conversion pain wears off.
--Levi
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