OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out

[Mike McCarty]

fedora at butterflystitches.com.au wrote:

> 
> I would think it would be fairly easy, when exporting to any format to know 
> what of the OOo formating can't be saved properly, then check if the document 
> about to be saved has any of these.  And put up a requester only if something 
> in the formating can't be saved correctly.

Exactly my point.

> 
> create a test.txt file using 
> $ echo "this is a test" > test.txt
> 
> Start OpenOffice.org 1.1
> Open a test.txt (OK)
> Save as test.doc (OK)
> Add an empty line to the end of the document
> Save (Got requester)

And this is exactly my complaint. IT IS LAZY-BONES PROGRAMMING.

There is no excuse for it. Well, in a programming class where no-
one doing the programming claims to be anything like an expert
software professional, yes, that's an excuse for a student-
produced program. But for something which purports to be produced
for professional, serious use, this is just unacceptable.

BTW, "But the OTHER OS's product does the same thing!" is *also*
not an excuse.

> I know that there isn't anything that can't be saved correctly in this plain 
> text document but I still got the requester saying there might be.  I don't 
> think this is wise.

You are being kind.

Kinda getting into topic drift, here :-)

Mike
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