Portable Documents
Ever since computers came into being people have been trying to agree on a universal document format. Something that all computers and all people of all languages could agree with. This is a utopian idea. Adobe came up with PDF (Portable Document Format) a million years ago. This was supposed to answer the call in the eighties. Adobe intended the PDF format to be how the Internet communicated. I've worked with PDF and I can tell you, it is far too complicated and prone to failure for such long distance linking of information. Then came GRML. HTML and XML are subsets of GRML. This language was intended to cover all written human language. It falls a bit short, but it tries very hard. HTML is a very small part of the whole GRML concept. PDF has little to do with it. GRML is not maintained by a company. Adobe and Microsoft have nothing that supports GRML, or HTML in true compatible form for that matter.
Microsoft insists it has a generic document format called “.DOC”. This is also known as a Microsoft Word document. Microsoft loves it when companies include Word documents on their software distributions and CDs. Well, Microsoft Word has a few tricks that have bitten companies in the butt. There is this thing called “Track Changes” that keeps you modifications around even after the changes are accepted. Someone can go back in many cases and view the progression of information. There have been incidences where purchasing departments have let it slip who else is being considered for the contract, and how much each vendor is asking. There have been incidents where people received how much other people were getting in a bonus, or who was getting disciplined, or fired. Well, here is a story about how SCO has been bitten by what Microsoft insists is “not a problem”.
The moral of the story is multi-fold. (1) Screw Microsoft and their tyrannical obsession with tacking over the world. (2) Use a file format that you know only contains the information you want when you release it to anyone. (3) Do not be a SCO. (4) Do not assume things are innocent just because “everyone” uses them.