Mentioned only briefly, but the document format is potentially infinite because anyone can write an OLE/COM object that can be embedded in word (frequently done

Mentioned only briefly, but the document format is potentially infinite because anyone can write an OLE/COM object that can be embedded in word (frequently done without even realizing it via a copy/paste job). The resulting object then gets serialized into the save file, which means that unless you happen to have an environment that can restart the COM object you cannot actually create something that can guarantee 100% compatibility unless you also implement most of the windows API. And you say, so what, edge case, but i've yet to find anything that can import office documents with embedded visio, which seems to be all over creation in IT/etc documents, even though visio itself now saves in an OPC type format. This is one of the huge mac<->PC office issues and spawned a bunch of 3rd party visio clones. (which is its own set of problems).