Linux desktop apps need to cope with ancient file formats

Dom · Aug 4, 2003, 11:40 PM

ONE BIG OBSTACLE to the widescale adoption of the Linux operating system on the desktop is a block that Microsoft's played for all its worth for at least the last 10 years.

It's file formats.

Here's just a few little examples of how Microsoft plays this cunning game. If you develop using a Microsoft program, suddenly you find it's not that easy to move an application you wrote in say, QuickBASIC to the latest version of Voleware. Nor, for that matter, to move from VisualBASIC anything to anything else. What should be a recompile is nearly always quite a bit more than that.

And as for Microsoft Word, just don't get me started. The jovial Oliver Roll from Microsoft UK looked genuinely shocked when I said there's no way I'd upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Word because I'd spent three years working on a book and the new one didn't recognise the old one's thousands of glossaries associated with specialist fonts I'd created.

Still, we all know that sort of thing. For example, the old Civil Aviation Authority back in the early 90s advocated a corporation wide move to the Windows OS - and the nabobs up top didn't realise that there were gazillions of lines of codes written in dBase II and the like, that wouldn't move that easily.

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Aug 4, 2003, 11:40 PM	#1
Dom DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 12,940 Rep Power: 0	Linux desktop apps need to cope with ancient file formats ONE BIG OBSTACLE to the widescale adoption of the Linux operating system on the desktop is a block that Microsoft's played for all its worth for at least the last 10 years. It's file formats. Here's just a few little examples of how Microsoft plays this cunning game. If you develop using a Microsoft program, suddenly you find it's not that easy to move an application you wrote in say, QuickBASIC to the latest version of Voleware. Nor, for that matter, to move from VisualBASIC anything to anything else. What should be a recompile is nearly always quite a bit more than that. And as for Microsoft Word, just don't get me started. The jovial Oliver Roll from Microsoft UK looked genuinely shocked when I said there's no way I'd upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Word because I'd spent three years working on a book and the new one didn't recognise the old one's thousands of glossaries associated with specialist fonts I'd created. Still, we all know that sort of thing. For example, the old Civil Aviation Authority back in the early 90s advocated a corporation wide move to the Windows OS - and the nabobs up top didn't realise that there were gazillions of lines of codes written in dBase II and the like, that wouldn't move that easily. Read More...