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Subject: 
Re: Inventories
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Wed, 29 Sep 1999 17:31:47 GMT
Viewed: 
633 times
  
In lugnet.general, Steve Bliss writes:

Is MacOffice still a viable thing?  Especially MacAccess -- since the
Access file format changes with each release, and there is no cross-version
compatibility (only backwards compatibility--newer releases. of Access can
read (and sometimes update) files in old formats).

Supposedly Office 2000 fixes or addresses this issue.  It allows you to save a
file in older versions.  The problem you run into is that whenever a new
feature is added into a program, it requires that the file format be modified
to accept the feature.  Imagine way back when centered text wasn't available.
How could a program written back then properly open a file that has centered
text, columns, drop caps and a spreadsheet table in it?

Many people complain about file incompatibility, but the only way to stop it
is to stop innovating the line of programs and most of the people who would
support doing that are probably the ones that can't figure out how to do xyz
with Program X anyway.  Power users want upgrades, as there is always
something that can be improved.


Has Jet been ported to Linux?  Without the Jet engine, nobody in Linux is
going to do anything, unless the Access file format has been published.

Steve

Well, Access can read other engines, so if Jet isn't available, all that is
needed is to copy the format into a new back end database dat file and obtain
an ODBC driver for Access to read the engine.  Then all we would need to do is
agree on an engine.  Of course, there will always be some person in the stone
age that wants a format compatible with his Commodore 64, TRS-80 or Apple
III.  If the majority of people can't read Jet, I would venture a guess that
SQL might be easier, since I would assume that it would already be ported over
to UNIX.

Mike



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Inventories
 
[ XFUT lugnet.off-topic.geek ] [ Warning: Contains strong acronyms. ] Mike Poindexter: [...] (...) Yes. But it can be done in various ways. Some of them (PNG and HTML for example) are designed so you still can read the files with an old program, (...) (25 years ago, 30-Sep-99, to lugnet.general, lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Inventories
 
(...) Is MacOffice still a viable thing? Especially MacAccess -- since the Access file format changes with each release, and there is no cross-version compatibility (only backwards compatibility--newer releases. of Access can read (and sometimes (...) (25 years ago, 29-Sep-99, to lugnet.general)

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