How to Read/Write RTF and Word Files?

[Greg Jorgensen]

On 23 May 2001, David LeBlanc wrote:

> Microsoft calls it "embrace and extend" - I call it "bait and switch".

Further off-topic:

The practice used to be called platform lock-in; IBM perfected it back in
the heyday of mainframes. Every hardware and software company wants to
lock their customers in. I don't see anything evil in it as long as they
don't try to crush their competitors (which perhaps they have done or
tried to do).

In the case of RTF, the standard started with Microsoft and it's always
been a published standard. It suffers from inconsistent implementation,
but overall it works well enough. On the other hand the word .doc format
has never been open or published.  Microsoft's implementations of HTML and
the JavaScript DOM are no less standard than Netscape's (and a good bit
more useful, in my opinion).

For a while Microsoft's Java VM on Windows was the best Java VM anywhere,
certainly better than Sun's. I only half-fault Microsoft for picking up
Java and running with it; Sun's pace of development is too slow, and Sun
is only committed to open source as long as they can make money from it.

I work with Oracle and PL/SQL at my day job, and I sure wish Oracle had
exercised some restraint with their non-standard implementation of
SQL--talk about platform lock-in! By comparison Microsoft's T-SQL conforms
very closely to the SQL standard.

I'm not defending everything Microsoft does and I don't use their software
unless I have to, but not everything they do is evil, and some of their
whiniest critics are guilty of the same bad behavior.

-- 
Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon USA
gregj at pobox.com