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BMcClain -at- centura -dot- com wrote:
>
> <<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.
But Microsoft presumably doesn't want to help a rival product.
My guess is that Microsoft would rather have everyone using its
products.
> 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.
Actually, there's been a fair amount of reverse engineering. One
program, msview, converts simple MS Word files to HTML; it's
very handy when you get a .doc attachment and just want a quick
look without firing up a word processor (and since you're on
Linux, you don't have to worry about VBS viruses, either).
Sun has also produced some XML translation filters for
StarOffice. I'm not sure whether these were built with in any
inside knowledge of MS Word or not, but they're in the recently
released OpenOffice version of StarOffice. Since they are now
open source and reasonably good, they could be hacked for other
purposes and word processors.
--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com | 604.421.7189
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