[ros-dev] Microsoft Office files in the trunk

[Reuben Perelman]

"svn diff" can't handle binary files as good as text files.

Casper Hornstrup wrote:

>Subversion handles binary files just as good as text files.
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org [mailto:ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org] 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
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Ros-dev mailing list
>>>Ros-dev at reactos.org
>>>http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
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