Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!microsoft!stuartb From: stuartb@microsoft.UUCP (Stuart Burden) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Word format (proprietary formats in general) Message-ID: <52@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 6 Feb 89 07:21:03 GMT References: <347@microsoft.UUCP> <2354@ilium.cs.swarthmore.edu> <3685@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM> Reply-To: stuartb@microsoft.UUCP (Stuart Burden) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 30 In article <3685@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM> bradn@tekig4.LEN.TEK.COM (Bradford Needham) writes: [Story about WhizBang and BlindingLight deleted.. although enjoyed] | The moral here is that "proprietary standard" is an oxymoron. If you plan | to dominate the market with a whiz-bang program, you had better give its | file formats away to whoever asks for it. | Brad Needham On a purely personal level (said for the benifit of the purist thought police here, who don't give a hoot if I have a disclaimer or not)... I agree 100%. I'd love to see us put the Word binary format into the public arena. I think it would be a pain to maintain though (interpreting Fast Save is a real .. well lets not get nasty.. :-)). I agree that nothing becomes a standard in computing these days unless it is generally available for public consumption. If you want the binary format send me e-mail (or write to the address I posted before). I will make sure that it gets to the program manager for Word. Stu. __Paths to my door:_______________________ microsoft!stuartb@beaver.cs.washington.edu - Usual disclaimer, that all microsoft!stuartb@uw-beaver.arpa - the above is pure fantasy microsoft!stuartb@uunet.UU.NET - and Microsoft only [DE01HB]stuartb@DASNET# {from AppleLink} - gave me the Mountain Dew stuartb@microsoft.uucp {well connected} - to dream it all in a D2012 {@applelink.apple.com - shared acct} - caffeine haze :-) __________________________________________________________________________