RE: FW: PageMaker file extension and portability

[BMcClain -at- centura -dot- com]

Thx for response, Dick.  Replies below.

Bill McClain
("Writers are always selling somebody out."  - Joan Didion)


-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Margulis [mailto:margulis -at- fiam -dot- net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 5:09 PM
To: McClain, Bill; TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: FW: PageMaker file extension and portability


<<In any case, what would be Adobe's purpose in making the file format
open? Does Microsoft publish the structure of their Word files? Not that
I'm aware of.>>

In a word: conversion.  It's possible to convert from QuarkExpress to PM,
but (AFAIK) not the other way.  And who knows:  With the advent of Linux and
the open-source software movement, plenty of hackers out there bemoan the
fact that MS won't openly publish the Word filespec.  

Who's to say some wunderkind hacker out there isn't putting together a
killer page-layout program that could go head-to-head with them both?
(Arguably GIMP can give Photoshop et al. a run for their money.)  But
without knowing one's way around the guts of Word documents, it's not an
easy thing to write import/export software -- an essential feature of such
an app.

Also, I very vaguely recall some dust-up in the mid-90s wherein Adobe and
some other organization got into a "No, you first" impasse about developing
translators for importing and exporting to/from PM.  Anybody who'd like to
regale me with the details might want to contact me offline.



<<Most software publishers rather prefer that you buy their programs to 
read their files, don't they?>>

Of course.  Competition aside, knowing the file structure would make it
easier to write open-source utilities that could search through a Word
document for things like style usages.  But, AIUI, if you want to know how
MS Word makes files, you have to pay Microsoft a princely sum for the
privilege.  If anybody knows differently, I hope it gets announced on
slashdot.org.



<<Finally, it is not altogether obvious that anyone at Adobe would
actually be able to publish a full description of the file format. Adobe
bought the company that originated PageMaker, Aldus, several years back.
I suspect the core code is as shrouded in mystery to the current
programming staff as that of Word is to the Microsoft nerds.>>

Well, I thought Adobe bought Aldus in its entirety when the acquired PM.
Maybe there are some remaining licensing issues involved with third-party
software technology (a big reason why we'll probably never live to see OS/2
put in the public domain).  Or maybe somebody on the development team still
owns rights to his/her code.



"McClain, Bill" wrote:
> 
> I've often wondered why there are third-party products that can translate
> Adobe's PDF format used in Acrobat, but nobody's ever come up with a
parser
> for PageMaker.  Did Adobe open the PDF specification?  If so, why not do
so
> for PageMaker's files?  Or was the former reverse-engineered but not the
> latter?
>

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