How to Read/Write RTF and Word Files?

[David LeBlanc]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.33.0105212138280.764-100000 at C800000-
A.potlnd1.or.home.com>, greg at pdxperts.com says...
> On Mon, 21 May 2001, Steve Nordby wrote:
> 
> > I thought IBM defined RTF.  Microsoft define a non-proprietary
> > standard?  Doesn't seem to fit the MS way of doing things.
> 
> I guess some good elves infiltrate the Evil Empire once in a while.
> Actually Microsoft has authored, contributed to, and supported many
> non-proprietary standards. And, like lots of other companies, they have
> implemented proprietary document formats in their own applications.
> 
> Greg Jorgensen
> PDXperts LLC
> Portland, Oregon, USA
> gregj at pobox.com
> 
> 
> 
Why yes, indeed they do embrace many non-proprietary standards - then 
they extend them in proprietary ways which, oddly enough, always seems to 
manage to have features that make the <whatever> really useful.

A case in point is something I worked on for a large company in Redmond, 
WA. While the client information and even reference implementations 
are/where freely available, the server side information was built into 
this company's products and little to no information about the server 
side of the protocol being developed was made available without co$t.

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

Dave LeBlanc