Re:Microsoft files monopoly complaint against Google
by nkassis on Thursday March 31, 2011 @01:11PM
(#2392470)
Even basic fidelity was not possible due to some really complex issues (excel date format) which were not documented anywhere. Look at the PDF format, it's a very complex format that almost no one fully support, but the 95% of features people use are supported in a bunch of non-adobe viewers and creators. This only happened after adobe made the PDF spec open. And they still make a ton of money off Adobe Acrobat.
Re:Microsoft files monopoly complaint against Google
by kenjackson on Thursday March 31, 2011 @01:28PM
(#2392555)
I just exported a bunch of date fields to a CSV. They look fine. Probably 95% of Excel files in use can be exported as a CSV and capture all the data.
Re:Microsoft files monopoly complaint against Google
by rbanffy on Thursday March 31, 2011 @07:57PM
(#2394316)
> With Word and Excel you could always save to RTF, TXT, or CSV.
Good luck with your formulas in CSV...
> Getting the data out is easy. You could do that with any version of Word/Excel.
Ken... I have had problems with different releases of Office (PC and Mac) importing Office documents... It was never easy. It wasn't even very predictable.
But people wanted the full fidelity of the MS file formats on different systems. Like I want the full power of GMail with a different ad provider.
Getting the data out is easy. You could do that with any version of Word/Excel. In fact, you could have built automation tools to do this, drop it into an ETL, and have it anywhere you like.
The data is rarely the full issue. It's the fidelity of service that people want.