Re: Docs To Go and Abiword

On Sat, 2004-11-13 at 09:04 -0800, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Shannon,
>
> > As a matter of fact, this sounds a lot more like a
> > Microsoft response. It
> > is not our fault it is theirs...tell them to fix it.
>
> Name calling won't get you anywhere. It's a matter of
> manpower and resources. Dataviz has access to the
> hardware in question; we do not. They have access to
> the software in question; we do not. It's also unclear
> that even if we had access to those things that we
> could diagnose and fix this problem.
>
> You paid Dataviz for the privelege of using their
> software and theoretically for some sort of support.
> I'd place the burden of diagnosing this problem on
> them as it is their product failing to read what
> otherwise appears to be a valid file. If not, they
> clearly don't value you and others like you as a
> customer, and it may affect their bottom line.
>

As further defence of this stance with which I agree 100%.

To my knowledge, RTF generated by AbiWord is read perfectly well by MS
Word, Word Perfect,
Applix Word, Open Office, Kword (as well as Kword reads any RTF), TED,
and Word Pad.

This is blantantly a bug with DTG. If it's not a bug with DTG then they
should tell us,
what aspect of our RTF export chokes their importer.

If DTG says, "only works with MS Word" on their box then they've morally
covered their
arse I guess.

Finally MS Word exports all sorts of extra unneeded stuff including
lines like "generated by MS Word version ...."

For all we know DTG might actually look for that and automatically choke
if it's not found.

> You're free to file a bug in our bug database
> (http://bugzilla.abisource.com). If one of our
> developers eventually gets access to such hardware and
> software, then perhaps the bug will be fixed. You're
> entitled to report what you think are problems in the
> correct forum - in this case, Bugzilla. You're not
> entitled to demand fixes.
>
> We'll try to accomodate you where adequate resources
> and information permit. Since this we currently lack
> said resources and information, I ask you to file a
> bug.
>
> > If, as you state, the rtf spec is large and complex
> > how can you say, without
> > any more checking or investigation that the issue is
> > not the fault of
> > AbiWord but is the fault of Dataviz? This is
> > especially true since .doc
> > files from AbiWord don't sync either. While those
> > from OpenOffice do.
>
> As it's been explained, our ".doc" files are really
> RTF files with a .doc extension.
>
> The RTF spec is indeed large and complex, though you
> made it out to seem trivial. We've taken great strides
> to make sure that our RTF files are as
> standards-compliant as possible. OpenOffice, Word,
> WordPad, WordPerfect, Ted, MacOSX, and a great many
> others can read our files. If these products can but
> Dataviz can't, I'm inclined to say that the bug is
> *most likely* their problem and not ours.
>
> Stated otherwise, it's their fault until proven
> otherwise. The burden of proof is on them.
>
> Best,
> Dom
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
> www.yahoo.com
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
> abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word
> unsubscribe in the message body.

-- 
Martin Sevior <msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au>
University of Melbourne
-----------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word
unsubscribe in the message body.