[SPG_Active_Members] Microsoft release binary file format documentation

[jim_manley]

Hi Len, Randy, et al,

It's Microsoft's reaction to OpenOffice and state and EU governments' efforts to do what the Justice Department  and federal judges punted/fumbled badly.

This isn't as much of a windfall as it might seem.  The file formats are all there, and that's the problem ... it's ALL there in a massive dump (a brain or core dump would imply an intelligent organization).   In order to figure out how to interpret a given version of a file, one has to wade through thousands of spec pages to find all of the associated info (ii.e., in order to understand any of it, you have to understand all of it - anyone who wanted to write early Mac software will instantly recognize this as analagous to reading the Addison-Wesley "Inside Macintosh" Syndrome :)  

For anyone who wasn't involved in the development of the MS app file I/O software to make sense of the dumps will require the efforts of themselves, as well as their children, their chldren's children. and their children's children's children, as the song goes.

The OpenOffice reverse engineering successes are all the more remarkable in light of the publication of MS's specs, and may yet be the only useful way to ever read/write MS app files, without spending even more than MS did developing their apps, even at the slave wages they paid their MicroSerfs (interesting novel based on MS programmers' social behavior and view from the inside, BTW).

That's just my opinion, though - I could be wrong.

All the Best,
Jim