[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

[Landon Blake]

James wrote: " My point isn't that .doc is a good format, but it is
readily available to read in many software packages (some very free and
open)."

In this sense .doc is a lot like .dwg files. It's use is pervasive, but
there is no published spec. That is one thing that really makes ESRI
Shapefiles stand out from the crowd. As soon as ESRI published the spec
for Shapefiles it was easy for them to become universal.

I won't comment on the .doc topic, but I will say that I believe
Autodesk has vehemently guarded the .dwg format to maintain a monopoly.
I suppose you could argue the same thing of Microsoft. I will point out
one important difference between .dwg and .doc, however. Autodesk does
publish the spec for the DXF format. There isn't a whole terrible lot
that you can transfer with a DXF that you can with a DWG. I don't think
rtf or .txt come even close to .doc.

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Fee, James
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 9:57 AM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

Landon Blake wrote

>>  I would remind Mr. Fee, very humbly (of course), that he is on the
OSGeo
>>  mailing list, so in some respects he's chosen a fight in which he is
>>  very outnumbered. I don't know how productive it is to aggressively
>>  defend something like the .doc format on a mailing list for
proponents
>>  of open source software. :]

Let me assure you I'm am cursing Microsoft Office as we speak. 

My point isn't that .doc is a good format, but it is readily available
to read in many software packages (some very free and open).  Things
like ESRI's File Geodatabase are probably formats that I would tend to
agree are an impediment to sharing data, but I don't see how any of the
MS formats are limiting people using them or creating them.

--
James Fee, GISP
Associate
TEC Inc.
voice:  480.736.3976
data:  480.736.3677
internet:  jmfee at tecinc.com


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