Panther's TextEdit to Open MS Word Files

2muchcoffeeman writes "Further signs that Jobs and Gates probably won't be vacationing together anytime soon: New Damage has what looks to be screenshot proof of Panther's TextEdit.app opening a Microsoft Word .DOC file. Panther beta users who have tried this report at MacSlash that it works, to a point. So what's next? Is Apple now going to bring back the late, great MacWrite Pro?"

Comments

Apple is stepping up

[chia_monkey]

Apple has been getting bold. And I love it. I still wonder about it all though. Safari rocks. Of course MS gets scared and stops making IE for Mac. FinalCut Pro kicks ass. Now Adobe wants to stop making Premier for the Mac. Apple has Keynote to compete with PowerPoint. And PDF creation with OS X is damn simple.

Apple is taking on all the big boys...something you just don't see these days. It's very exciting. And let's all be honest. Why do Mac users buy MS Office? Because it's good? Nope. So they can open up .doc files made on a PC. Go Apple!

Re:Apple is stepping up

[Atzanteol]

Aren't those the same list of things that if done by Microsoft would have you screaming bloody murder though?

Seriously, this is what I've always hated about both companies. They *need* control over their platform. Apple has a draconian rule over their hardware, and is pushing for more of the same in software. Microsoft will simply crush opposition in software, but is pretty reasonable about hardware (drivers are another issue).

Re:Apple is stepping up

[PeeweeJD]

Why do Mac users buy MS Office? Because it's good? Nope. So they can open up .doc files made on a PC.

Actually it is good. It does not conform 100% to the apple OSX guidelines, but it is close enough for me. Its also fast and stable.

It is also nice to be able to create documents and share them with those less fortunate (Windows people). There is no spreadsheet program that is near what Excel does.

Openoffice.org is great and all that, but until they can get it to run outside of an X window system, it can't compete with MS Office on the mac.

If Apple wants to kick MS square in the nuts, they need to put out some kind of competitive office suite that opens up, and saves MS office files. It would not surprise me if they did the same thing with OOo as they did with safari. Apple has been burning alot of bridges lately with MS and there is only one left that I can see hat matters any (MS Office)

Re:Apple is stepping up

[Jucius Maximus]

"Safari rocks. Of course MS gets scared and stops making IE for Mac."

Safari was just an excuse. MSFT was planning on discontinuing IE for the mac for a long time now and Apple knew it. MSFT will use a backwards version of the tactic they used to oust netscape from the browser market. They will use their browser monopoly and IE features integrated into Longhorn OS to marginalise the OS market. You'll need Longhorn to access web services (banking, bill payment, etc.) that Microsoft plans to make "essential" and exclusive to windows users. That way they attack Apple and any other OS rivals simultaneously. Damn those MSFT busienss strategists are smart...

Why? Because it makes sense.

Re:Apple is stepping up

[American AC in Paris]

Aren't those the same list of things that if done by Microsoft would have you screaming bloody murder though?

Seriously, this is what I've always hated about both companies. They *need* control over their platform. Apple has a draconian rule over their hardware, and is pushing for more of the same in software. Microsoft will simply crush opposition in software, but is pretty reasonable about hardware (drivers are another issue).

To each his own. I've never held it against Cuisinart that I can't use cheaper Hamilton-Beach parts in my food processor. I don't begrudge the fact that I can't buy a Hyundai Town Car. I don't hold it against Apple that I can't call up Bob's Discount Apple Parts and build my own OS X box.

Apple makes a damn solid product, box to bits. Part of the reason they can do this is that they don't need to waste time and money trying to support several thousand incrementally different sound cards, network adapters, modems, video cards, mainboards, etc.

Re:Apple is stepping up

[rtm1]

Aren't those the same list of things that if done by Microsoft would have you screaming bloody murder though?

I don't think so really. If MS announced that Office was going to support OpenOffice native formats and KOffice formats then would we be upset? Probably not.

The difference is that Apple is supporting more standards and formats, while MS typically tries to force their own standards on you to the exclusion of all others. And when MS does implement other people's standards they typically throw in some proprietary 'feature' that fosters incompatibility.. That's what we scream bloody murder about.

Re:Apple is stepping up

[dbrutus]

Web services nightmare

July 4, 2006

Dear Mr. Bank CEO,

Apple customers + Linux customers are about 7% of the desktop market. The xxx Bank web banking solution doesn't support anything but Internet Explorer which is not available on any platform but Windows. As a shareholder, I'm concerned that we're losing customers and money because of this. I intend to bring this up at the shareholder's meeting. You're in the business of making the bank's shareholders money, not shilling for Microsoft. There is *no* reason not to support everybody's computer platform. Their money spends just as well.

Sincerely,

Large shareholder mac user

Re:Apple is stepping up

[BitGeek]

Thats kinda silly-- Apple does control their hardware-- nothing draconian about it.

AS to their software, they are not trying to be the only software provider for their platform-- they spend millions every year building free development tools, and working to get the message out.

They built safari and then released a killer webkit to allow any app builder to easily put a html renderer (or web browser) into thier app. This isn't draconian-- they recognize that there are a lot of apps that could use web or http access conveneintly for unexpected things, and so they provide support for it.

Apple is really kicking ass in developmetn tools-- they aren't top of the line yet, but they have a lot more momentum than even open source ones like eclipse. They want everyone to develop for the mac platform.

The only places where they are competing head to head with third party developers are ones where those developers are working to kill the mac platform.

Premiere on the mac SUCKED and has sucked for years, driving many Mac users to windows. Office is designed to do the same thing.

Thank god apple is finally going after those people who are working to undermine their platform and showing that the best of breed video editing (for instance) is once agian on the mac platform.... and with good reason given the great multimedia platofrm they've built with quicktime and their hardware.

This isn't control-- its support for the platform!

Re:PDF

[djward]

PDF is the default screen capture format in Mac OS X (10.2), and I assume in Panther as well.

This might work, but then again maybe not...

[danrees]

The problem with any application providing support for MS Office formats is that the format changes from version to version, therefore it is difficult to preserve the content and formatting of documents perfectly. Anybody using OpenOffice.org will notice that formatting done on MS Word is modified slightly when opened in OpenOffice.org - for documents where layouts are more complicated and space matters (e.g. CVs), this causes problems.

If Apple can create a filter that preserves complex formatting, it should be on to a winner for home users. However, I somewhat doubt that Apple can do so, when Microsoft's own versions of Office can't even cope with changes in the file format...

Re:This might work, but then again maybe not...

[figleaf]

Word/Excel formats didn't change in Office XP.
Powerpoint formats haven't changed since Office 97

Freeware app that gives similar functionality

[xyrw]

Here's a link to a freeware app that already enables Cocoa applications to do a similar thing, but with text only: AntiWord Service. It works on Mac OS X 10.1.5 and higher.

It works

[Anonymous Coward]

It works, but it's not perfect, in some of my documents there are some minor problems, mostly with escape characters. Though, more importantly the fonts are rendered beautifully, instead of the jagged fonts that one has to deal with when using Office v.X.

Re:PDF

[Kvorg]

They used pdf because it is the easiest format on the MacOSX, of course. The Quartz layer is running DisplayPDF, a subset of PDF (analogous to the relationship of DisplayPS of the late NeXTStep, and regular PS): that is what gives the smooth and fast look of vector graphics and permits for blazing fast GL-accelerated PDF rendering. It also means PDF is a very basic part of the system (see Quartz reference and Quartz 2D library ("Quartz 2D gives you access to powerful features such as path-based drawing, advanced color management, anti-aliasing, Bézier curves, PDF generation and playback, and transparency"). So PDF is the default MacOS format, these days.

A good slashdotter would peek in the file and notice this:

Producer: Mac OS X 10.3 Quartz PDFContext

It would have been kind of cool if the window would be rendered in vector graphics, in the reality, and directly displayed to PDF. A vector desktop still seems to be a dream, or did I get something wrong?

Office Package Speculation

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I have heard rumors of Apple working on an Office suite which includes a word processor called "Document" and a spreadsheet app cleverly called "Spreadsheet". It seems as though they are going to test and hopefully perfect the most important feature in TextEdit first, reading .doc files.

Once they have the bugs worked out, they will release Document which will be able to open .doc files perfectly and resave them into Document's native XML format. Document will hopefully be available for Mac OS X and Windows.

Microsoft's .doc format has a death grip on the business world. Unless there is an affordable alternative that can read .doc files it isn't going very far.

The word processor is the only piece of the office package that most users need. Apple should make just Document for the PC and make it affordable. It will introduce many PC users to how software should be written. Like the iPod it will be a trojan horse that will hopefully cause them to consider a Mac for their next purchase.

This won't replace office until

[commodoresloat]

...Apple puts a talking paperclip into TextEdit

HOLY FUCK.

[Mikey-San]

I just got Slashdotted.

So far, I'm holding up, thanks to Smallbits, my host. AWESOME host, also host of Bungie.org.

I am going to make a t-shirt that says: "I've been Slashdotted. Have you?"

Re:The question is...

[andrewski]

Never. The other stuff aside from Darwin is closed and will likely remain so. They are reimplemented in GNUstep fairly completely today. It isn't just possible, but rather trivial to port from one to the other if that is a design factor.

Darwin, however, is both open source and Free Software.

After all, when they went to BSD, they inherited most all the apps and filters from Linux too.

OS X is based on Rhapsody, which was Openstep 5.0, which was based on OpenStep 4, which was based on Nextstep 3.3, and all but OS X trace their lineage to BSD 4.3 (IIRC). OS X is based off FreeBSD, which too traces its lineage to BSD 4.4. The new Panther is supposedly based off FreeBSD 5.x series, which almost gives me wood. Linux never really gave much to Apple. Apple did, however, port Linux to a great many Macs though, and gave that project to the community.

Apple is indebted to the FSF for its use of GCC, like Next was before it, and generally has played really well with the community in recent years.

Apple's versus MS's tactics

[Slur]

Aren't those the same list of things that if done by Microsoft would have you screaming bloody murder though?

No, absolutely not. The things that have bugged me have been:

• Leveraging their OS monopoly and closed data formats to create barriers to competition rather than making a better product. (Internet Explorer, DirectX, etc.)
• Pretending to embrace standards then creating extensions that make their version incompatible and platform-locked. (Java being the prime example.)
• Using FUD - misrepresenting competing methods and technologies - in order to make themselves appear better. (Most recently pretending that Safari uses hidden APIs.)
• Creating silly political initiatives like the Freedom To Innovate Network (FIN), astroturfing, and occasional phone surveys to create the appearance of grass-roots support.

All that Apple has done is to push standards, make excellent use of open standards and Open Source APIs, and apply a consistent and elegant design aesthetic to their OS and their applications. In short, they have excelled through integrity and hard work. If Apple has an unfair advantage, it is only that they have applied a greater effort than others seem to have the courage to do.

NSText

[rohanl]

When I read the parent, it occurred to me that this is much more than TextEdit being able to read Word files.

TextEdit is a very simple program. Apple even supply the full source for it in the developer tools under /Developer/Examples/AppKit/TextEdit

All the real work is done by standard Cocoa classes NSTextView and NSTextStorage. If TextEdit understands Word files, it means that they have added the support to these standard classes. That means that *ALL* cocoa applications will inherit this functionality.