4 ms·

headline says "open" and libreoffice opened it with no problem.

by soperj 3y ago

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
I simply opened the file with my hex editor. Problem solved. (sarcasm)
- jgrahamc 3y ago
  I actually opened it in emacs in hexl-mode before I ran the file command!
- skissane 3y ago
  In the past, I have in all seriousness read Microsoft Word documents on Linux using less. I might have had LibreOffice installed, but it can’t run over SSH. It works okay with most old school (pre-XML) ones, since the document text is in the file in plain ASCII amidst all the binary formatting stuff. For the new XML formats, less by itself doesn’t do anything useful, but unzip them and you can read the XML containing the document text.
  - pests 3y ago
    Word supported a mode, in order to speed up saving, changes were appended to the file in a diff-like format. How could you know you were reading the right content if it could be overwritten later on?
    - skissane 3y ago
      Sometimes “reading the right content” isn’t that important - e.g. “what is this random doc document about?” “oh, it is a design doc for the XYZ subsystem”. Unless the changes completely rewrote the document into a completely different document, which I expect would be rare If I was going to use the document in anger, I would open it with something proper, of course
    - vidarh 3y ago
      I once negotiated a higher offer for a job because the company sent out an offer letter they'd done this with, where the deleted details for another offer gave me info about another role that made me (correctly) guess there was room to ask for more.
      - pests 3y ago
        Reminds me of whatever image format or editor that handled cropping the same way. Data was still there, bounds just redefined. I remember a celebrity leaking some photos or similar back in the early 2000s or similar.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    > but it can’t run over SSH. I know it's being pedantic, but it absolutely can, libreoffice will happily run over a ssh -X tunnelled X display.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Oh yeah, but that would require me to start an X server. Which I could do, but why bother when less does the job? Also, less starts a lot faster than LibreOffice does

headline says "open" and libreoffice opened it with no problem.

by soperj 3y ago

headline says "open" and libreoffice opened it with no problem.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

I simply opened the file with my hex editor. Problem solved. (sarcasm)

jgrahamc 3y ago
I actually opened it in emacs in hexl-mode before I ran the file command!
skissane 3y ago
In the past, I have in all seriousness read Microsoft Word documents on Linux using less. I might have had LibreOffice installed, but it can’t run over SSH. It works okay with most old school (pre-XML) ones, since the document text is in the file in plain ASCII amidst all the binary formatting stuff. For the new XML formats, less by itself doesn’t do anything useful, but unzip them and you can read the XML containing the document text.
- pests 3y ago
  Word supported a mode, in order to speed up saving, changes were appended to the file in a diff-like format. How could you know you were reading the right content if it could be overwritten later on?
  - skissane 3y ago
    Sometimes “reading the right content” isn’t that important - e.g. “what is this random doc document about?” “oh, it is a design doc for the XYZ subsystem”. Unless the changes completely rewrote the document into a completely different document, which I expect would be rare If I was going to use the document in anger, I would open it with something proper, of course
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I once negotiated a higher offer for a job because the company sent out an offer letter they'd done this with, where the deleted details for another offer gave me info about another role that made me (correctly) guess there was room to ask for more.
    - pests 3y ago
      Reminds me of whatever image format or editor that handled cropping the same way. Data was still there, bounds just redefined. I remember a celebrity leaking some photos or similar back in the early 2000s or similar.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  > but it can’t run over SSH. I know it's being pedantic, but it absolutely can, libreoffice will happily run over a ssh -X tunnelled X display.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Oh yeah, but that would require me to start an X server. Which I could do, but why bother when less does the job? Also, less starts a lot faster than LibreOffice does