On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:44:22AM +0200, Guillaume Ponce wrote:
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
No, no ,NO!
The definition of a transparent copy as in the FDL (not "Yet Another Definition of Transparent Copy"):
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
I do not now if ".doc" specification is available, I doubt it is fully.
IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere. There are obviously some minor incompatibilities between standard and Microsoft implementation, but that's true for every other format.
I'm not sure of that. I have made some search (on msdn.microsoft.com) and found only the RTF specification. Could you provide an url ?
minor incompatibilities ? minor for proprietary software... not for Free Software.
But I am sure it connot be edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors (as GNU Emacs, Vi or... say Notepad).
Generic text editors doesn't mean *plain text* editors. That would be silly - 99% of population uses WYSYWIG for such things.
You can edit it in OpenOffice, AbiWord, KWord and ton of other *formatted text* editors.
Word format is THE archetype of what is an opaque one, specificly designed to trap users' data.
It's not. It was designed with single program in mind but there's nothing in it that prevents other people from implementing the standard.
It's not ? Have you tried to import old word format into current word version or third-party Free Software supporting word format ? I don't agree with you at all regarding the Word file format, It's a an opaque one and for multiple reasons :
- There is some patent owned by Microsoft regarding Office. I think some description could be valable for Word format description. (did you remember the silly trick of Microsoft regarding the CIFS license ?) So we could have a restruction of using the description.
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
- The evolution of the format is linked to one company/product.
- The evolution of the format is linked to proprietary software.
adulau
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