From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham
	autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Thread: 103376,666bab5bfbdf30c2
X-Google-NewGroupId: yes
X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,UTF8
Path: 
 g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!feeder.news-service.com!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Generating PDFs with Ada
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:41:13 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID: <87tyhfgu5y.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org>
References: <4d2908c7$0$22120$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>
	<9f23e50a-2c2c-4ccc-bd56-f6ffdc6c7ee7@37g2000prx.googlegroups.com>
	<82aaj73jsr.fsf@stephe-leake.org>
	<9600f7e1-496b-4232-a5b8-50bc97d8dd7a@g26g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Info: mx01.eternal-september.org;
 posting-host="LPTMbs2kOOuoZvxXzRFXoA";
	logging-data="16983"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";
	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19BpvXh45eN0Uo1QD6Xhk3U"
User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:TB/9mpM86pFl0ookefPyCAXf9jk=
	sha1:wj9wNyVRlGwVDYTjyQch9b30A+k=
Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:17345
Date: 2011-01-11T19:41:13+01:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Adam Beneschan writes:
> On Jan 11, 12:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
> wrote:
>
>> > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several
>> > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word
>> > documents.
>>
>> I hope not :)
>
> Why?  (Maybe I shouldn't pursue this, but I've gotten curious about
> what the thinking is behind this sort of answer.)

Because Microsoft Word is proprietary and uses a non-standard,
proprietary and ever-changing format (think "planned obsolescence").
Even the more recent so-called "Open XML" format contains many parts
that are not in the public spec, making it anything but "open".

You are a proponent of Ada.  One of the selling points of the language
is that it is not only an official ISO standard but an open one at that.
Microsoft formats are neither official ISO standards nor open.  In
contrast:

PDF/A, appropriate for immutable content, is ISO 19005-1:2005;
OpenDocument, appropriate for mutable content, is ISO/IEC 26300:2006;
full PDF 1.7 is ISO 32000-1:2008.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.