[lug] anyone familiar with Word file format issues?

[rm at fabula.de]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 12:24:35AM -0700, D. Stimits wrote:
> I'm curious, if I were to write a library that outputs some document
> style as Word, has anyone heard whether MS would try to file a lawsuit
> to stop it (think conversion utility)? Though I suspect it wouldn't be
> practical, the standards for it probably are not published, or if so,
> probably incomplete or out of date.

I guess you'd need an expensive legal examination to get a more or less
final word on that :-) But so you really need to export in Word format?
The real danger i see is that this format tends to 'migrate' pretty fast,
after all that's one trick to get MS customers to upgrade. Why not stay
with RTF? Not only is it used as an exchange format for many applications,
it's also the native styled text format for both the NextStep and Mac OSX
operating systems. You even get extensive (but poor) documentation from
Microsoft. I have some legacy database applications that export to RTF
(bibliographic databases and reference programs) and so far haven't had any
problems. 

  Ralf


> D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com
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