In article <pighash->,
Stephen Henning <> wrote:
>Hugh Gibbons <> wrote:
>
>> > The schools here all use applications which can open and save in a
>> > standard format, not in a proprietary version oriented format. Such
>> > formats include:
>> >
>> > Word, Excel, JPEG, Text, RTF, PICT, etc. Some newer features can't be
>> > used in older versions, but the document can be opened and edited.
>>
>> What makes you think Word and Excel are not proprietary formats?
>
>Oh they are proprietary all right, but they are not VERSION ORIENTED.
>That is an older version can open a newer version's files.
>
>When I ran a Windows office with WIndows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000
>and Windows XP and then when home and used my Macs with OS 8, OS 9, OS X
>10.2.8 and OS X 10.4.1, I could port my Word and Excel files between any
>of these operating systems. As long as I avoided exotic new
>capabilities, all things could be read easily. With Microsoft products,
>you can force then to save files in a older formats to insure
>compatibility, but I never found that necessary.
I have. Frequently. This sort of forward compatibility you claim is
(a) very hard to ensure and (b) certainly doesn't exist in Word and
Excel. I downloaded some Word documents from the UK government
education website, and they would not open in *any* Mac version of Word.
I got the site to replace them with versions saved as Word 97 format,
and then it was OK.
But Microsoft *regularly* change their file formats. It's a deliberate
policy to encourage people to "upgrade".
Tim
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