Re: Docs To Go and Abiword

Op zo, 14-11-2004 te 18:09 -0800, schreef r coyne:
> I'm just guessing, since I don't know RTF, but I can
> imagine a scenario that would explain the problem.
> Suppose MS always writes their own RTF in a certain
[snip]
> full spec, only the part that MS actually uses, since
> that's what they're really concerned about. They
> might, indeed, have little choice; hardware does
> constrain. (So "it's not a bug, it's a feature.")
> Only their advertising is wrong, if they claim to do
> "RTF" when in fact they only do some
> usually-sufficient subset of it.

This is most likely what is happening, yes.

> So it's their
> "fault," but the easy fix might be to Abi, by changing
> (or offering users an option that changes) one style
> of synonyms or syntax to another in your output. I
> would think this might be automated, thus not all that
> much effort for the developers. Of course, if DTG is
> obscure enough, Abi may have as little interest in
> compatibility with them as they seem to have in
> compatibility with you. But the point is that if
> maximal compatibility is the goal, the ball isn't
> necessarily in the bad guys' court.

Well, while this might work, we have no resources to make such a change.
Furthermore, I doubt any of the developers wants to spend his/her spare
time on reworking the exporter to generate RTF files so that one
propriety application can read them.

If anyone should make that change, it would be DTG developers
contributing to AbiWord. We happily accept patches. If they don't want
to send us patches to our rtf exporter or if they don't want to fix
their product, they basically say: "Sorry customers, use MS Word. We
don't care if you want to use our product to read conformant RTF."

Bye!
  Marc

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Received on Mon Nov 15 03:43:05 2004