[KLUG Members] Re: Calling all Linux novices: -- Why moving files back to MS Word is difficult ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

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On Wed, 2003-01-15 at 20:21, Adam Williams wrote:
> I have experience "integrating" Office on Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows
> 2000, and OO on Linux.  My church has representative users of all three,
> and we do a fair amount of file swapping.  Obviously this is still
> ancedotal, but I can tell ya' that Mac OS Office -> Open Office is often
> more successful than Mac OS Office -> Win32 Office.  Win32 Office -> Mac
> OS Office seems pretty reliable, but the other way around is just
> freaky.  Font problems as usual, and images often look like they spent a
> few hours locked in an iron box with a poltergeist.

As I posted to someone off-list ... (regarding non-Windows Word ->
Windows Word):


   > How do you know?

   Two years ago a former Microsoft developer broke his silence and
   commented on how horrendous the MS Word codebase is.  There isn't the
   byte endian and alignment control in the code that reads and writes
   documents, as well as various functionality that affects it.  He
   explained in detail _why_ various compatibility issues exists because
   of them.

   There was a link regarding it on /.  I can't seem to find it.

   > This doesn't make sense to me;  the Mac programmers would just
   > write code that reads and writes little-endian files.

   Correct!  And that's why Macs _usually_ read the files from Windows.=20
   Because such accomodation _is_ done in the Mac versions of MS Word as
   best as the Microsoft developers can (which is a major PITA according
   to this guy).  You _always_ have to worry about such things on a
   non-x86 platform.

   But when the files go back to Windows, bam!  You've got the issues
   there.  This is largely because the MS Word developers themselves do
   _not_ know the "exact" binary format of Windows-only files, so how
   can the Mac versions accommodate???  They blindly let their byte
   endian/alignment ignorant code (i.e., they just write straight binary
   records, 0 thought of such issues) for reads/writes, like
   many x86-only developers.

   It also explains why different MS Word versions, and even the _same_
   Word version, lose things from time-to-time.  Changes in how the
   Visual Studio tools align things, etc...  Each rebuild of the MS Word
   codebase on even a slightly different build of Visual Studio, can
   result in "lost attributes" in older files.

   There's simply _no_way_ to regression test all the attributes and how
   their offest may be affected, resulting in some things "breaking" in
   a patch to MS Word.


> But at least the trusty Linux box lets the Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and
> Windows 2000 merrily communicate with each other!  Net-a-talk, Samba,
> and LDAP perform magnificently.=20

Because there is a wire to sniff, which makes reverse engineering 10x
easier.

You don't have that help with file formats.

--=20
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. (BSECE)       Contact Info:  http://thebs.org
[ http://thebs.org/files/resume/BryanJonSmith_certifications.pdf ]
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