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“This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

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Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#51

Post by Turing_Machine »

clarry wrote: post #30
Turing_Machine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are FOSS implementations of PDF. Mozilla has one, I think. Edit: yep. http://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/

Yeah, that's the one that always bitched and moaned about not being able to display the document correctly. I got tired of it and disabled the thing. I've used other PDF viewers (Evince, xpdf, gs, mupdf), and tell you what.. I've come across PDFs they cannot display properly. If I have to rely on others implementing things for me, and there is concrete evidence that others have trouble doing it, why would I rely on s…

As they say: "patches welcome".

Do you also implement your own OS from scratch, or do you rely on others?

Every FOSS OS I know of has patches coming out on near-daily basis.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#52

Post by stephencanon »

scrollaway wrote: post #35
stephencanon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text formats should be readable forever. PDF, while generally excellent in this regard, has already broken backwards-comparability on several occasions (or rather: Acrobat has, which is not formally the same as the format doing so, but in practice there isn’t a whole lot of difference; you might as well just read the raw xml in an “unopenable” keynote document). Adobe’s marketing will tell you otherwise, of course. I…

PDF is an open spec since a few years. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

Open spec doesn't help unless all the creation tools adhere strictly to the specification. Historically, they haven't, and support for their various "quirks" has been uneven at best.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#53

Post by thatthatis »

superuser2 wrote: post #40

When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license. I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give y…

5 years is not a long time for information to be retrievable.

By comparison, my current version of office easily allows saving (not just opening, but saving) in versions compatible with office '97. That's ~17 years of saving backward compatibility.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#54

Post by jakejake »

The author might consider using Microsoft products because they are obsessive about providing backwards compatibility. That's one of the positive things about Microsoft products. The downside is that they have to deal with a lot of old baggage as a result.

Apple, on the other hand is almost the opposite. They're obsessive about upgrading everyone and leaving the past behind. That's great because they're free to make bold and innovative changes. The downside of course is that you and your files sometimes get left behind.

Both are valid strategies in my opinion and appeal to different customers. If you feel like backwards compatibility is a really important feature then whether you want to admit it or not, you probably would be happy as a Microsoft customer.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#55

Post by itcmcgrath »

valarauca1 wrote: post #2

A lot of people have absolutely no problem with proprietary software until it breaks. The problem is you never know when it will break, and what it'll take down with it. I'm not saying 'go full Stallman'. I'm just saying think that when ever you hand over your data to a private company if they consider it as important as you consider it.

s/proprietary//

While I like non-proprietary software, there is nothing inherit that makes much of a difference for the lay person. As the complexity of the software goes up, so does the level of what is considered a 'lay person'. For any sufficiently complex software and non-pervasive problem - you're SOL in both cases. Standards help more than proprietary/non-proprietary. Lower complexity also helps more.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#56

Post by dman »

sz4kerto wrote: post #25
yuhong wrote: post #3

I think even MS is better than this at supporting old Office binary formats. Only PowerPoint has completely removed the support for pre-97 formats. With Word/Excel you can generally unblock support for older formats even if by default they will not open.

'even MS' MS is one of the best in supporting old formats. That's part of how and why the managed to keep their monopoly on the desktop. There's not many OSs out there where you can start a 20 year old software and it runs almost always perfectly. (Try that on Linux or OSX.)

In my mind that honor belongs to Sun with Solaris.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#57

Post by paultyng »

superuser2 wrote: post #40

When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license. I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give y…

Microsoft does support Office file formats back to '97 though.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#58

Post by yasth »

superuser2 wrote: post #40

When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license. I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give y…

MS on the right license plan really doesn't care and will happily give you any version you want. Off the right license plan I've heard multiple reports of MS actually giving out downloads where needed. Adobe might not overly care, but MS seems to be willing to make things right for retail software (OEM software is another issue).

Though a lot of the reasons for the complaints is that you don't need generally need a copy of Office 2003.

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#59

Post by ithinkso »

clarry wrote: post #30
Turing_Machine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are FOSS implementations of PDF. Mozilla has one, I think. Edit: yep. http://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/

Yeah, that's the one that always bitched and moaned about not being able to display the document correctly. I got tired of it and disabled the thing. I've used other PDF viewers (Evince, xpdf, gs, mupdf), and tell you what.. I've come across PDFs they cannot display properly. If I have to rely on others implementing things for me, and there is concrete evidence that others have trouble doing it, why would I rely on s…

This bugs me a lot. If the spec is known how it is possible for some random reader to not being able to display it. Is pdf now somewhat html in late 90's where it was browser specified rather than specification?

Re: “This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old”

#60

Post by yuhong »

thatthatis wrote: post #53
superuser2 wrote: post #40

When I reinstalled my OS and neglected to save iWork '09, I called Apple and they overnighted me an install disk for free without even checking that I actually owned an iWork license. I don't see why it's reasonable to expect to be given software from the CD/DVD era as a digital download. It would be nice, yes, but Adobe will not give you a digital download of CS5 (I tried.) I'd be surprised if Microsoft would give y…

5 years is not a long time for information to be retrievable. By comparison, my current version of office easily allows saving (not just opening, but saving) in versions compatible with office '97. That's ~17 years of saving backward compatibility.

I think you can even save in Excel 5.0/95 format in current versions of Excel.
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