Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: CONVERTING A MICROSOFT TEMPLATE TO BE USED WITH LIBRE OFFICE

Alex Thurgood wrote:
> The dev working on LO didn't like the StarOffice binary filter code, so
> they got rid of it, simple as that - they certainly didn't care whether
> people who had started using the "original" product, the one that gave
> birth both to OOo and LO, over 10 years ago would still want that file
> format supported - "data guarantee" I hear you say ? Bah, humbug.
> Clearly a case of :"if you're not working on the codebase, we're not
> listening to you, lalalala, sticks fingers in ears..."
>
> There was nothing seriously broken about the binary filter code used to
> support those binary sd* file types, but it was a hefty chunk of code to
> get rid of from the code base, and met the goal of reducing "code clutter".
Hi Alex,

au contraire. There were a ton of things broken with the binary filter
code. Most importantly, it was a snapshot copy of loads of the
application and filter code (some 140 kLOC in total), left to rot &
unmaintained many years before LibreOffice started.

Also, for just the StarOffice 1.0-5.0 import functionality, it came at
a rather huge footprint to (every!) LibreOffice download (some 10MB or so
for the download, some 20MB or so per install).

That thing really was beyond hope, and IMO it would have been a very
non-smart investment to encourage developers to even keep it on life
support any longer. It's not that the project has infinite developer
resources, and there are many others things that need attention.

> Then the LO project had the gall to sign itself up to some document
> format project that will claim to support all those old document
> formats...hahaha, the irony of it all...
I miss the irony. Those filters pride themselves not to hold internal
copies of Corel Draw, Visio etc etc application code, but rather
provide clean, minimal, import-only filters. The door is wide open to
implement StarOffice binary format importers there. ;)

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

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