Python vs Visual Basic

[achrist at easystreet.com]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> Orange Free wrote:
> 
> May I suggest an alternative?  Perhaps you might be satisfied with
> generating a foo.rtf rather than foo.doc file.  Now, the RTF format
> isn't much easier or better documented than the DOC format, but it
> has the advantage that RTF format files are TEXT.  

I just looked at some RTF's, and they contain Ascii character 10's (\n)
not paired with Ascii character 13's (\r).  This is not a TEXT
format file according to MS's OS's.  If you try to write this data from
Python as a text file, you'll get the \r's inserted automatically, the
contents of the file will change, and who knows what will result.  

Still, the rtf format is a good one because other programs more
affordable than MS Word do a reasonably good job of reading and 
writing it.

Al