I'm pretty sure a .doc file created fifteen years ago also still renders in Word.
Same for a PDF file created 15 years ago or most other formats. So I don't really see your point about open standards in this case.
Same for a PDF file created 15 years ago or most other formats. So I don't really see your point about open standards in this case.
Check this out: http://timtyson.us/archives/2008/01/theft-by-taking/
Old MS Office file formats were never engineered to be future proof in any way, and they're a huge headache for Microsoft, and they do indeed behave oddly in new software, and Microsoft cannot wait to get rid of them, and nobody in their right mind can blame them, honestly.
Open standards rock.
>Some specifications for Microsoft Office 97 binary file formats were published in 1997 under a restrictive license, but these specifications were removed from online download in 1999. Specifications of later versions of Microsoft Office binary file formats were not publicly available. The DOC format specification was available from Microsoft on request since 2006 under restrictive RAND-Z terms until February 2008. Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice.org reverse engineered the file format. Microsoft released a .DOC format specification under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. However, this specification does not describe all of the features used by DOC format and reverse engineered work remains necessary.
I'd like to expand on this. The Microsoft Word team is the only group of people that ever had any say over what goes in a Word document. In the old days, a Word document was nothing more than the serialized version of what Word had in memory. Photoshop files are the same way. As soon as you're not the only one with a say over the file format, you turn it into a standard. And you step up to make it a good standard because otherwise nobody's going to use it.
My conclusion is that any standards rock.
Standards with producers/consumers from different independent teams from different organizations with different goals are awesome.
He's simply saying that backwards compatibility and open standards are good things in that they don't break old sites/docs/etc...
You could have just as easily said the same thing and ended with "So I don't really see your point about backwards compatibility in this case".
Backwards compatibility is often the forced result of open standards because when multiple vendors adopt those standards it is in their best interest to not make breaking changes.
This in turn is(obviously) a good thing in that things designed for those standards will remain functional indefinitely.
I used to work at a research institute and the people who used Word always spent more time getting their papers to look as nice as the LaTeX users, particularly if you crossed platforms or had change tracking enabled (hello undeletable footnote in the middle of the page…). The barrier to entry was higher but if you needed reliably consistent formatting there wasn't really a better option, with the exception of HTML5 + CSS + your favorite MathML shim if you're submitting to a really web-centric journal.
> emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish [1]
I think if you replace "emacs" with "TeX" and "editing software" with "document formatting system", the quote holds just as well.
HTML is way more solid in that aspect: as long as you have a browser you should be able to open the document on any browser, any platform and get a very similar access to contents. There's nothing much comparable here... your "doc" example does not make much sense either on platforms where official Microsoft software is not available (Unix, anyone?)
These last two months, I've manually parsed old databases[0], some dating back 2001. Locked formats with unknown specs, schemas embedded in applications (good luck digging that out with IDA), data storing that makes no sense, losing your hair out,...
[0] Drop me a mail if you want to reverse-engineer an HyperfileSQL DB from around Y2K, I can help on that if you pay me with Red Bull.