Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice

On 11/26/2012 04:39 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> Arachaic formats (ie old formats that are almost never used nowadays 
> but may have been popular once) might be something that Extensions 
> could be used to deal with.  We might not want legacy code retained in 
> the main code to read ancient formats that 'no-one' uses anymore but 
> it might be nice to be able to add-on an Extension to read old love 
> letters and such.
>
> Also formats that kept the same name but went through many changes.  
> So that one Extension might help people read Doc formats prior to the 
> 1997 version and another reads the 97 one. That might be something to 
> help our poor devs deal with the 3 different DocX formats now in use.  
> One to read DocXs from MSO 2007, another for the 2010 and the 3rd for 
> MSO 365.  At the moment it would probably be best to have the 2010 one 
> by default but if that could easily be swapped-out and replaced by the 
> 365 one in a couple of years then we might retain a way of being able 
> to read all of them.
>
> I think such Extensions would need to be released on OpenSource 
> licenses either BSD type licenses that need to attribute previous 
> artists/authors/coders or GPL type ones that don't acknowledge 
> previous coders.  Then when the Extensions become outdated it might 
> still be possible for people to update them so they work in whichever 
> future version of LO we are on by that time.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
IMHO the real problem with archaic formats is the lack of available 
documentation forcing one to reverse engineer the format. I suspect this 
sounds much easier that it really is; particularly if you do not have a 
clue about the final text. Some of the very ancient formats may be 
accessible because they did not include any graphics/art/images in the 
file. They were all text with embedded codes for bold/italics, etc. For 
LO we need to make an intelligent cut and say these formats we will have 
the ability to import but others will not be supported. The selection 
being we already have the ability so updating/maintaining the code is 
required and others are so ancient that we do not have the resources to 
address the conversion. Note most ancient formats would probably only 
need an import filter not an export one.

>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *From:* Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com>
>     *To:* users@global.libreoffice.org
>     *Sent:* Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:56
>     *Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing]
>     Good Article for LibreOffice
>
>     On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote:
>     >
>     >
>     > Tom Davies wrote:
>     >> Hi :)
>     >> It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about
>     articles such as this one.
>     >>
>     
> https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success
>
>     >>
>     >> There are some interesting stats that are very well presented
>     in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how
>     LibreOffice works.
>     >>
>     >> For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention
>     is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly
>     overnight  it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one.  It
>     would be like not making back-ups of critical information!!  If we
>     can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users
>     can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being
>     2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is
>     massive.  Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1
>     or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were
>     to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good
>     product out there.  By sticking with MS people are risking
>     everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1
>     company and that company is losing market share to mobile
>     devices.  Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but
>     it might not.
>     >> Regards from
>     >> Tom :)
>     > Greetings,
>     > My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably eliminate, risk to
>     my data.  I learned the hard way many years ago that depending on
>     M$ and other proprietary software suppliers was way too risky.  I
>     then decided to switch to Open Source software and take back
>     control of my computer.  I have never regretted that decision.
>     Even if LO/AOO go away, there are still other applications, such
>     as Koffice, that will still allow me to read/maintain my documents
>     & data.  And, if it comes down to it, I can always unzip my LO/OO
>     files and get the data from the file(s) inside.  That allows me to
>     sleep at night.
>     > Girvin Herr
>     >
>     >
>     +1
>     I prefer the FOSS / open formats model better for the reasons you
>     noted.
>     > From a general user perspective; open formats are probably more
>     important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can
>     remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular
>     15+ years ago that are unreadable by any software in current
>     release. To make matters worse you may even have files you would
>     like to read in these formats. You may find a conversion software
>     that claims to accurately convert the obsolete format to a
>     currently used format - I can not vouch for anyone's claims.
>
>     The problem with any proprietary format is whether someone will
>     continue to provide software that can edit it in the future or
>     will it eventually become an orphan. Amipro and Wordstar come to
>     mind and I am sure others can be named.
>
>     -- Jay Lozier
>     jslozier@gmail.com <mailto:jslozier@gmail.com>
>
>
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--
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


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