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>
> Quote:
>
> The file format substantially changed when they moved from Word
> 95 to Word
> 97. The Word 6/95 binary file format was freely published, but
> the Word 97 &
> later file format is only licensed to Government, "qualified
> customers" or
> qualified ISVs.
>
> Unquote
>
> And what a brouhaha that caused because WordPerfect ceased to be
> compatible
> with MS Word.
>
> I believe shortly after that, that MS released Word 7 which
> restored 'some'
> compatibility.
>
> It might also be about the time the they (MS) created some
> converters for
> the different word processors.
>
> Could be wrong, but not far off
Sorry, but that's not right. There are 3 points where you are in error.
1. Word 7 was Word 95, not a new version subsequent to Word 97.
2. The brouhaha was because Word 97 initially couldn't save in Word 6/Word
95 format, but could only save to RTF format which could in turn be read by
Word 6 & Word 95. I remember. I contributed to the brouhaha. The shouting at
the time did lead Microsoft to fundamentally re-evaluate how they did
product updates - it was the first time that they had realised the extent to
which documents got shared widely with and between organisations which had
different versions of Office.
3. Conversion between Word and WordPerfect has always been flaky, and this
long predates Word 97. This article (writen by somebody involved in creating
the WordPerfect import filter for microsoft) describes the reasons why.
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