Re: Saving files as .doc borked?

From: Austin Gonyou (austin@digitalroadkill.net)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 18:46:29 EST

  • Next message: Hubert Figuiere: "Re: Saving files as .doc borked?"

    On Mon, 2002-03-18 at 17:38, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
    > On Tue, 2002-03-19 at 00:30, Austin Gonyou wrote:
    > > If I save a file as MS Word or RTF, then try to read it with something
    > > like OpenWriter, OpenWriter crashes immediately.
    >
    > Unless they tell us what is wrong in our file, then it is an OpenWriter
    > bug. Anyway their RTF importer is not really wonderful.

    Yes, Much to be desired. Still, .doc is a binary format, and right now
    Abiword is saving as RTF1, with .doc extension.

    >
    > >
    > > Looking at the .doc, it shows that it's just RTF, at least it appears so
    > > to me.
    >
    > It is. The .doc saving feature is on illusion that we made to users so
    > that they stop asking us for that feature. Writing .doc file is far from
    > being on easy task....
    >

    Office XP/2000 .doc code is available in OpenOffice. :)

    > > I'm curious what's going on here. This also goes the same for saving
    > > files as .DOC in OpenWriter then re-saving them in abiword.
    >
    > Sure since we completely rewrite the file.

    The point of that is that technically is a one-way conversion, so users
    of OpenOffice can't effectively open files from users of AbiWord if
    saved as RTF or .doc. I agree, OpenOffice's problem, but also
    Abisource's problem since that one-way conversion could break the stream
    of functionality in an business environment.

    > > However, documents sent to me by other people using word97, or 2000 open
    > > just fine in OpenWriter, whereas formatting is usually messed up in
    > > Abiword. This goes for RTFs too.
    >
    > Do they contain table ? Then you've got the answer.
    >

    Some do, obviously that won't work, but some are just tab driven, and
    the difference in font-rendering, etc, seems to cause a big problem.

    >
    > Hub

    Thx.
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