Re:Microsoft calls for a closer look at app stores
by gtk40 on Friday June 19, 2020 @11:31AM
(#23575456)
It's interesting RTF is discontinued when it is still the default format on the included word processor in Windows. I checked WordPad on Windows 10 and it still saves to RTF by default, though it supports docx and odt as well.
Re:Microsoft calls for a closer look at app stores
by magicalhippo on Friday June 19, 2020 @01:44PM
(#23576941)
Unless they changed something the last couple of years, WordPad is just a wrapper around the Windows rich edit common control[1], which as its name implies, is based around RTF[2].
[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/rich...
[2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/em-s...
Re:Microsoft calls for a closer look at app stores
by teddyh on Friday June 19, 2020 @06:39PM
(#23579583)
Microsoft is famously backwards-compatible, and support for RTF is still present in those programs which originally had it, like Write, the included word processor in Windows since Windows 1 (replaced in Windows 95 with WordPad, which retains its features). But is RTF usable for its original purpose – interoperability? Can you open a reasonably complex Word document and save it as RTF, and then open it in LibreOffice? Can you save an RTF document from LibreOffice and open it in Microsoft Word without loss? Is Microsoft working to maintain RTF interoperability in order to promote cross-program document compatibility? No. To quote Wikipedia, “Microsoft has discontinued enhancements to the RTF specification. New features in Word 2010 and later versions will not save properly to the RTF format.”¹
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rich_Text_Format&...
And of course Microsoft dropped RTF like a hot potato when they managed to use their new Microsoft Windows platform to leverage into a huge market advantage for Microsoft Word. Other vendors were obviously initially reluctant to spend enormous resources to port their software to Windows, a competitor’s platform, but Microsoft could spend hugely on developent of Microsoft Word for Windows, making it very impressive graphically, and when the Windows platform was successful, all other word processing software vendors were left behind, forced to play catch-up. I also remember hearing that Microsoft were using secret Windows APIs to get nice things like toolbar icons in color, not available to non-Microsoft companies.