I've had some first hand experience with this.  I wrote a somewhat
widely used open source program (in <cough>VB<cough>) to convert RTF to
HTML. Then when Win2K came out they changed their format (not the spec -
just the way they interpreted the spec) just enough so my program didn't
work anymore...still that was really my fault for not following the spec
as completely as I should have.

On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 08:39, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 10:39:55PM -0600, Dan Churchill wrote:
> > I guess I didn't realize just where rich text format originated, but to be 
> > fair, this is at least one "standard" which M$ has released so that other 
> > people can use it.  I found the definition online at:
> > http://www.programmersheaven.com/zone22/cat187/2602.htm
> > 
> > Of course, in true M$ fashion, the legalese gives them the right to basically 
> > change it for no good reason and not tell anyone, which quite possibly has 
> > happened . . . I wouldn't know, as I almost never use it, and have never 
> > needed to write programs to read or write it.
> 
> I'm fairly sure that it has, since I've heard a number of comments
> over the years about "this is what the RTF spec says, but the _real_
> standard is however Word does it this week".  When talking about a
> proprietary standard, it seems that "proprietary" usually trumps
> "standard".
> 
> -- 
> When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
> have already won. - reverius
> 
> Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss
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