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,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!i17g2000vbq.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Adam Beneschan Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Generating PDFs with Ada Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:47:58 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: 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> <87tyhfgu5y.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.126.103.122 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1294778878 30370 127.0.0.1 (11 Jan 2011 20:47:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:47:58 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: i17g2000vbq.googlegroups.com; posting-host=66.126.103.122; posting-account=duW0ogkAAABjRdnxgLGXDfna0Gc6XqmQ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; .NET4.0C),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:17348 Date: 2011-01-11T12:47:58-08:00 List-Id: On Jan 11, 10:41=A0am, Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Adam Beneschan writes: > > On Jan 11, 12:51=A0am, Stephen Leake > > 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? =A0(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. =A0One 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. So what? Does "being a proponent of Ada" necessarily imply "being a proponent of users ditching all their proprietary, non-ISO, non-open stuff and changing their entire computing environment to fit some 'openness' paradigm"? I sure don't see it. There are a lot of Windows users out there. There are Ada compilers targeted to Windows (or do you object to that?). Many of those Windows users use tools like Microsoft Office. Do you believe that the Ada community should tell them, "Sorry, those tools aren't based on ISO standards, so Ada isn't for you"? I thought we were trying to encourage the spread of the Ada language. And I'm sure there are other tools out there (besides MS Office) that generate .doc files. Do we intend to tell those tools' authors, "Ada would be a great language for writing your tool--it would make your tool more robust and easier to maintain--but we don't want you to use it because you're generating something that has a proprietary format, so please use C++ instead"? Why??? As for Microsoft using a "non-standard, proprietary and ever-changing format", there seems to be some format information available at http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx How often this changes, I don't know, but they do have an interest in keeping things compatible, so something written according to this format would (I would think) work with any version of Microsoft Word for a number of years, at least, even if the format specification doesn't include all the latest features. (I notice that it's a specification for .doc files but there may not a public one for .docx). Still, I think that, at least hypothetically, this format information could be used to write a useful tool that generates a Word file, if one decided that it was necessary. It may be that the need for writing a Word document is small enough that nobody has considered it worth their while to write a library like that. I can accept that as a reason. But the attitude that I thought I detected---"I hope [that nobody writes a library like that]"---is not one that I believe serves the Ada community. I apologize if I read too much into anything anyone said. -- Adam