Word for Windows <--> Word for Mac

[Steve Fouts <sfouts -at- ELLISON -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

|}
|} Are Word for Windows documents compatible
|} with Word for the Mac?  In other words,
|} if I create a Word for Windows document
|} on my PC, transfer the disk to a Mac
|} disk, and open it in Word for the Mac,
|} will it have all the formatting and
|} text intact?
|}
|} Thanks,
|}
|} Linda
|}

In a word (pun intended), no. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Word for DOS and
word for Windows are not compatible. You have to export to RTF (Microsoft's
Rich Text Format, a tagged ASCII scheme) and pull the RTF file up on the
other platform. I have even had trouble with RTF files from one platform
being incompatible with another. PageMaker documents I can move from Windows
to Mac with no trouble (as long as I don't expect DOS documents to be
"32-bit clean" under system 7 (only Mac weenies running System 7 will care
what that means)) but Word Docs I have trouble with.

I use Interleaf on a SUN, but a lot of our engineers use Word on PCs. I have
three different filter templates that I have to use on the RTF depending
on whether the source Doc is RTF from a Mac, DOS, or Windows. Shipping stuff
out of Interleaf to Word is similarly complicated by this annoying oversite (?)
on the part of Microsoft, the "We're so proprietary, we can't even use our
own stuff" people.

Grumble.

******************** Steve Fouts
*     _    ___     * sfouts -at- ellison -dot- sc -dot- ti -dot- com
*    ( |____|      *
*   _ /\    |\ _   * "a little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of
*  / /  \  _| \ \  *  explanation."
* ( * )  \/_|__* ) *                                 --H. H. Munro
*  \_/  _/    \_/  *  <Boilerplate disclaimer here>
********************