OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out

[Itay Furman]

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tim wrote:

[snip]

> I still have word processor documents stored in about 6 or 7 unreadable
> formats on various discs.  About my only chance of conversion, with
> layout, is scanning and OCR.  If I just wanted content, and didn't mind
> re-laying out the content, I could save as plain text.  It really is a
> stupid situation to still be in.

This is one reason why I prefer the tex/latex model of 
typesetting documents, and avoid Office.

My LaTeX documents, written in the beginning of the '90, will 
probably compile under today's tex/latex without any 
modifications.  If not -- changes to only few lines should be 
enough to redeem most documents (there is no problem in doing the 
modifications since the latex source is just plain ascii file). 
Which means that I could always read the document's _contents_.

  	Itay