Re: Docs To Go and Abiword

No one asked the AbiWord development community to fix the bug in DTG
(especially not me since it isn't even an issue I reported) I only did some
testing in response to another post and then presented my results, strictly
to help out another user in troubleshooting. As I posted already, I don't
see this as a bug in DTG nor are they likely to fix it because their goal
and the feature is described as compatibility with MS Office not Open Office
or AbiWord.

Just stating the facts is not a bad thing. Honest admission and discussion
of bugs should be a hallmark of software development. Without doing so,
issues are never resolved and we end up with software that grows in
complexity as do the bugs. Fixing an issue in release 1 is significantly
easier than doing so in version 7 when other dependencies have been
introduced that make that same bug 10 times more difficult to fix. I don't
write code but I have to use and support the results of such mistakes so get
to live with that pain on a daily basis. My issue was a (perceived)
attitude of "We don't need to check our code because we know it is perfect,
go tell the other guy "who gets paid for it" to do it. That is an MS
attitude if I ever heard one. The later responses I received appeared more
reasoned and showed some more thought behind them and those were appreciated
and help to convince me that this open source thing might still be a
reasonable alternative.

I would like to point out one "flaw" in you logic, as I see it. Please
correct me if I am wrong. You say that "We know for a fact that our
generated RTF is the most compliant in the world, only second to MS Word
generated RTF itself." yet the point of this is that MS implementations of
rtf work while others don't so wouldn't that mean that there is at least the
potential of an issue with the AbiWord implementation and not an error by
the DTG programmers.

I am not trying to "make" anyone fix anything. It wasn't my issue to begin
with.

-sbaker
----- Original Message -----
From: "J.M. Maurer" <j.m.maurer@student.utwente.nl>
To: "Shannon Baker" <sbaker33@hotmail.com>
Cc: <abiword-user@abisource.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2004 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: Docs To Go and Abiword

> Dear Shannon,
>
> On Sat, 2004-11-13 at 16:09 +0000, Shannon Baker wrote:
>> Wow, this is my first experience with an open source project (even as a
>> user) and I must say that it does not live up to the hype and
>> expectations.
>
> We try to help as best as can, but we can't fix bugs in other (closed
> source) applications. We don't have access to them, and we don't have
> the manpower to do so.
>
>> As a matter of fact, this sounds a lot more like a Microsoft response.
>> It
>> is not our fault it is theirs...tell them to fix it.
>
> Why is stating the facts a bad thing? Comparing our response to a
> Microsoft response doesn't help fixing your issue at all.
>
>> If, as you state, the rtf spec is large and complex how can you say,
>> without
>> any more checking or investigation that the issue is not the fault of
>> AbiWord but is the fault of Dataviz?
>
> We know for a fact that our generated RTF is the most compliant in the
> world, only second to MS Word generated RTF itself.
>
>> This is especially true since .doc
>> files from AbiWord don't sync either. While those from OpenOffice do.
>
> The .doc files we generate are _RTF documents_ renamed as .doc. Hence
> they don't sync either (they have the same content!).
>
> We're sorry we can't help you with this issue. What I would propose to
> you is sending an example RTF file generated by AbiWord to the creators
> of Dataviz. They can investigate the issue, and see if their RTF support
> is compliant or not.
>
> If we are to blame, please tell us why. We can only verify our documents
> against the official specification. We are as compliant as one can be.
>
> Regards,
> Marc
>
>
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Received on Sun Nov 14 15:05:42 2004