61–70 of 217 posts
His biggest issue is he didn't have a CD reader? A basic USB DVD reader is cheap and sometimes quite handy. To say you lost your documents implies a lack of effort. If they were THAT important, you would get them. As far as proprietary in general, MS Office has done a pretty good job other than their Office 2003 XML stuff which had to be broken when they lost the patent ruling to i4i. Anyone looking at document longe…
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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
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I mean this in the nicest way, but you've rather missed the point. While your response might be technically accurate and true, the author speaks to a greater issue than a one-off hack will support.
No, I haven't and I do mean this in the most condescending way possible; he's complaining about the proprietary format not working and laments losing his stuff. He could easily solve his problems. It's not a "hack" to open a folder or do you reward yourself with a cookie every time you open a folder on your desktop? FFS, this is "HackerNews"... write a bash script to do it for you. Better yet, use some "super 1337 h4…
I have written quite a few bash scripts, python scripts and long ago ruby and smalltalk scripts to do things for me, that bothered me. My point is, this is a software I am paying for (and I've already mentioned that 2008 should not be considered as old) and I would rather spend my time writing the "super 1337 h4x0r" bash and python scripts for something that I can't do otherwise.
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…
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Additionally, there's nothing inherent about open source that avoids this sort of problem. An open source project could decide on exactly the same sort of upgrade path, where they support current-minus-one versions and that's it. In theory, open source is better because the old code is still out there and you can get it up and running to upgrade your data. In practice, it can be pretty tough to get open source code t…
I think LibreOffice 4.0 abandoned support for the old StarOffice binary format for example.
This is NOT true of all proprietary software. It's just that with apple either you keep upgrading to the latest and greatest all the time or you will have problems. Apple has its pros and cons, and one of those is that you have to keep upgrading regularly. Most proprietary software will offer upgrade paths from older versions.
With Libre software (rather than OSS), you the user stay in charge. It may require rolling up your sleeves (things have changed, and you can now easily find companies that will provide support in Libre software), but in the end you keep control.
Hi there - We are looking into this, and will get back to you soon. Thanks for your patience!
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…
Files are data. Data should be eternal. You should be able to convert a presentation you make today 30 years from now to a newer format. Making software not-backwards compatible is fine and normal but if files expire in a few years Apple is saying that the things you do on their computers are disposable.
This can be said for all sorts of things, from the Commodore 64 to Keynote. If you want to be able to access the data on an NES cartridge you are going to need special hardware and software. Yes the ROMS are available now online, but that's only because someone with the hardware and software made it available to others.
This is the nature of proprietary formats.
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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.
No, not today. Maybe in the future, who knows.
But I try not to depend on too many things and people, if there's a way around it. I like to have control. That's freedom to me, and freedom gives me peace of mind.
So, no, I don't see why I should waste my precious free time improving software support for a format that I find way overcomplicated and just plain silly. Why should I?