Don’t be deceived by the “M$” in eet’s comments. I’ve seen his comments elsewhere. He’s not against Microsoft, but he wants you to think that.

For DOCX we have specifications, for DOC we have no specifications.

So, you are now unmasking yourself as the MS troll you are. Defending optionally-open xml, that’s just great…

You shall try implementing a format that requires you to read 6000 pages just to implement it and that even after the 6000 pages there are still things you don’t know about the format.

No. We have as much DOC specification than DOCX. That does not mean 100%, that means same level for both formats.

The DOC spec was made available in MSDN for a long time, until 1998 actually.

Microsoft makes the DOC spec available for free (officeff@microsoft.com).

The problem is that the spec is more a description than specs as we know it. A consequence is that not everything is specified, and Microsoft retains the exclusivity in reliably reading, writing, rendering, calculating and migrating those files.

The hold up is that Microsoft is going to get the ISO timestamp even though they are not opening more DOCX than what they’ve done with DOC. And by retaining the exclusivity to implement this stuff reliably, it’s at odds with what a standard is for.

For DOCX we have specifications, for DOC we have no specifications.
How much higher do you rate comprehensive specs over no specs at all?

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That is true of the DOC format as well and DOCX have to be compatible with DOC. I mean, almost no other word processor supports VBA or IRM.

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