RE: Abi and RTF standards

From: Virgil Arrington Jr. (virgilarrington@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 25 2002 - 19:06:50 EST

  • Next message: Dom Lachowicz: "RE: Abi and RTF standards"

    Can I assume then that the bug I filed (2503) concerning Abi not saving the
    font size code to blank lines in RTF files will not be addressed?

    Virgil

    >From: Dom Lachowicz <doml@appligent.com>
    >To: "Virgil Arrington Jr." <virgilarrington@hotmail.com>
    >CC: sanity@dog.com, AbiWord User List <abiword-user@abisource.com>
    >Subject: RE: Abi and RTF standards
    >Date: 25 Mar 2002 09:46:13 -0500
    >
    >On Sun, 2002-03-24 at 18:32, Virgil Arrington Jr. wrote:
    > > From the Sane Anarchist,
    > >
    > > >I would like to have perfect compatability with Word, just like when I
    > > >design
    > > >a web page I want perfect compatability with Internet Explorer. But
    >not at
    > > >the loss of complying with the standards that browsers (or word
    >processors)
    > > >should be following anyway.
    > >
    > > Standards are nothing but man-made arbitrary rules, and they become more
    > > arbitrary and meaningless if nobody follows them. I know none of us
    >like to
    > > admit this, but MS-Word, bad as it is, has become THE word processing
    > > standard. I work in the legal profession and, while WordPerfect was the
    > > standard for years with lawyers, we are now being forced into switching
    >to
    > > Word because our clients use it and demand that our documents be
    >compatible
    > > with Word. I can't very well tell my client that the reason my Abi
    >created
    > > document can't be read on his computer is because his MS-Word doesn't
    >follow
    > > the standards. My client couldn't give two hoots about standards.
    >
    >Defining standards as man-made arbitrary rules is a bit simplistic. More
    >or less everything is man made and arbitrary in this field. The
    >important part, however, is that there are standardization committees
    >and organizations which formulate these rules, formalize them, approve
    >or reject them, publish them, and ultimately inforce them.
    >
    >MSWord is the de-facto standard word-processor out there. Its RTF
    >implementation, however, is not. RTF is a standard that we strive to
    >conform with. We do not strive to conform with broken implentations of
    >the RTF specification.
    >
    >OpenOffice is also huge (and growing in popularity), but their RTF
    >implementation sucks horribly. They took RTF 1.2, branched it, and made
    >all sorts of horrible incompatible hacks to it. They don't handle our
    >RTF. Should we break Abi so that they work? I don't think so.
    >
    >I refuse to let our standards complaince fall to an OO level. We will
    >not compromise our integrity to cover up another's mistakes.
    >
    >For the record, MSWord is highly complaint with the RTF specification,
    >so I don't view this so much as a problem. Sure, it doesn't honor a few
    >of the RTF keywords that Abi uses. But then it just ignores them, for a
    >minor loss in formatting. That's a small price to pay.
    >
    >Finally, I couldn't care if your client doesn't care about standards. He
    >should.
    >
    >Dom
    >/Strive to bring others up to your level, don't sulk down to theirs.
    ><< signature.asc >>

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