Re: Generating PDFs with Ada

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

>
> This is only half true.  Their interest is to make their software
> backward compatible (to ease migration to newer versions of their
> software) but forward incompatible (to *force* migration to newer
> versions of their software, aka planned obsolescence, and break
> competitors' tools, aka total dominance).  The only reason why they have
> published some specifications (the "Microsoft Open Specification
> Promise") is because "open" has become a buzzword and they want to be
> "buzzword compliant" and combat the rise of actual open standards.
> Remember: standards exist to protect customers against greedy vendors,
> not the opposite.  Me, I'll choose a Standard over a Promise every time.

+10

> Like Stephe, I too hope that nobody writes a library that helps generate
> .doc files.  My reason reason is that such a tool would endorse the
> proprietary format and help continue the dominance of evil proprietary
> formats against standard ones.  The same tool could be just as useful
> writing PDF, DocBook, OpenDocument or even Plain Text instead of any
> version of .doc.  Software engineers should promote standards whenever
> possible, whatever language they use.

+10

-- 
-- Stephe