RE: [ros-dev] Microsoft Office files in the trunk

[Casper Hornstrup]

Subversion handles binary files just as good as text files.

>   -----Original Message-----
>  From: ros-dev-bounces(a)reactos.org [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of
> Reuben Perelman
>  Sent: 14. november 2005 04:32
>  To: ReactOS Development List
>  Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Microsoft Office files in the trunk
>  
>  Why use a binary format? Shouldn't you be using ascii formats in a
>  subversion repository.
>  
>  Mike Swanson wrote:
>  
> >  In the branch of press-media, there are two
> > documents currently. An MS
> > Word and MS PowerPoint document.
> >
> > I'm calling for SVN committers for _no more_ MS Office documents. They
> > are a proprietary format, of which not all the features are currently
> > known. I recommend instead the use of OASIS OpenDocument. Not only
> > does it save much space, but it also does not contain any secrets in
> > which need to be reverse engineered to discover.
> >
> > Real life example:
> > I opened the MS Word flyer into AbiWord, and saw strange boxes. I
> > wondered what they could be, so I loaded very-large OpenOffice.org.
> > They are images! Not only that, but the formatting was drastically
> > different in OOo compared to AbiWord. However, in OOo, it did look a
> > lot more jumbled than the image-less AbiWord interpretation. Without a
> > copy of Microsoft Office, I am unable to determine how the documents
> > really should look.
> > I am able to open the PowerPoint file in OpenOffice.org too, but as
> > it's the only presentation software I have, I can't tell to see if
> > there's any other interpretation differences between free presentation
> > programs (assuming they support PPT . . . )
> >
> > OpenDocument isn't just some crazy format that a couple of programs
> > support, either. Two complete office suits which support it are
> > OpenOffice.org and KOffice. Two examples of individual applications
> > supporting it are AbiWord and Gnumeric. By far, these are not the only
> > programs which support it, the number is in the dozens. It's an
> > XML-based format (easy to implement), compressed with Info-ZIP's
> > DEFLATE.
> > Really, Microsoft is the only developer that refuses to use this open
> > file format. They claim that "it doesn't support all the features of
> > Office", but even that shouldn't stop them (weather it's true or not),
> > after all, they use _far_ more limiting formats like plain text or
> > CSV.
> >
> > Please, for the good of the project, use the free OpenDocument format.
> > If not for the reason of being open or free, but simply for the fact
> > that it ensures that everybody will be able to view such documents (no
> > need to buy any pricey office suites here!).
> > --
> > Mike
> >
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> >
> >
> >  
>  
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