Re: Docs To Go and Abiword

Hi Shannon.

Sorry you found the initial AbiWord responses a little, well,
unresponsive. I'm not a developer, but as a user who like to lurk on
these lists, I may be able to offer a little explanation (though I
notice Marc just sent a message which says a lot of what I say here
too).

I suspect the developers felt they were able to respond so quickly that
it's not Abi's fault because they have put a *lot* of time and effort
into RTF import/export capabilities. They know the RTF spec is large
because they know it well. From what I understand, the only word
processor that *may* have better RTF support is MS Word. I agree that it
is possible that there's a bug in AbiWord's RTF support causing this,
but it is extremely unlikely. If there is one, I'm confident it will be
found and fixed quite quickly.

The reason AbiWord's DOC files don't open in Docs To Go is fairly
straightforward (though unfortunate in your case). Technically, Abi
doesn't create files in the MS Word DOC format. It creates an RTF file
and then puts a .doc extension on the end. This creates a file that Word
is able to work with without problems. It may not be an ideal solution,
but since the RTF spec is published and the DOC one is not (and is
constantly changing) it's one that works and allows the developers to
spend more time on features rather than trying to reverse engineer the
DOC file format. So, since DTG doesn't properly import Abi's RTF files,
it won't properly import Abi's DOC files either.

I agree with Dom and Marc that it would be good take this issue up with
Dataviz. You purchased their product and it does not seem to be
performing as advertised. Looking at their product website, they do
claim to support RTF files. I sincerely hope they are able to resolve
the problem for you, and if it turns out that it is an AbiWord problem
after all, please do let us know.

Andy

-- 
Andy Korvemaker
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