Re: Generating PDFs with Ada

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:25:42 -0800 (PST), Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> On Jan 12, 11:04�am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
> 
>> You make a valid point from the software design point of view.
>> Unfortunately Microsoft switches interfaces at the speed only slighter
>> slower than the formats. Remember DDE, OLE?
> 
> Still, if your target is a Word file, this is the most stable option.

Some time ago it was DDE.

> More stable than the file format itself. I wouldn't be surprised to
> see my old code still working properly.

Well, it depends. An unrelated example, but for the sake of argument, if
you merely change the compiler from VC2008 to VC2010, your C++ program will
stop working under Windows NT4.0,95,98...2000. Instead investigating
possible reasons why, let us just note this. The moral is anything is
possible and anything is likely.

> In any case, we can think about this issue in this way: if our
> customer already enjoys paying Microsoft every so often for Office
> upgrades, then he might also enjoy paying *us* for repeatedly
> rewriting the document generation engine within the system that we
> maintain for him. Right? ;-)

Not really. Surely we don't write *.doc files, I cannot imagine a customer,
who would request that. But we indeed write *.xls files (or what is the
extension now) on many occasions. Customers don't pay for that. They expect
it working, so it is our expenses in the end. The problem is not that
great, because most of the customers keep on using Windows XP and aren't
affected by the "upgrades." But sooner or later the next turn will come.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de