5 ms·
People are reacting negatively as expected, but stuff like this is exactly why you can click on a file that was written in Word '97 or a game that was compiled
by paxys 3y ago
People are reacting negatively as expected, but stuff like this is exactly why you can click on a file that was written in Word '97 or a game that was compiled for MS-DOS three decades ago and it opens on your computer exactly as expected. Backwards compatibility is always messy. You either do it imperfectly or don't do it at all.
- blibble 3y agoMS-DOS software doesn't work on modern 64-bit windows you get a dialog saying "unsupported" now you can download dosbox but that isn't really "exactly as expected"
- dupertrooper 3y agoUmm but you can’t find a current version of Word that actually does that. Try it sometime.
- EvanAnderson 3y agoHere's a rather large (5MB) vintage 1996 Microsoft Word document: https://archive.org/download/cd-pn-0527a/CD_ROM.ISO/APPENDIX%2FDNS.DOC https://archive.org/download/cd-pn-0527a/CD_ROM.ISO/APPENDIX... That file opens and appears to render just fine for me in Word 2016. This has been my experience w/ Office files in general. Old files open and render very well in newer versions.
- weinzierl 3y agoThe point made above was "opens exactly as expected". So, does it look like the authors intended in 1996? I doubt it.
- Arainach 3y agoIf you "doubt" it, please provide a specific example of what you believe is inaccurate in the document rendering.
- morsch 3y agoAs it happens, we just had this discussion regarding a Word document from 1990: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39357709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39357709
- weinzierl 3y agoQuote from the article: "Converting this document from its original format was a bit of a victory for open source software. And a lesson in how hard document preservation is." So, opening this document was hard and that it finally worked was not because of Microsoft's alleged famous backwards compatibility- which is a myth in my book.
- weinzierl 3y agoI doubt it because, as I said, Word did not even render the document the same on two different installations back in the day. Contrary to LaTeX, there is really no way to know what "opens on your computer exactly as expected" even means. We do not know what the original author intended it to look like, because we do not know how the document looked like to them. As long as there is no retroactive interpretation, like it happened with RGB, for example, the "doubt it" will stand.
- EvanAnderson 3y agoJust flipping thru it I'm not seeing obvious issues. In terms of being usable for reference I think it's reasonable. The diagrams and tables look intelligible and not garbled. Layout isn't visible screwed-up. Will it be a 1-to-1 with printed output from 1996? Probably not.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago“exactly as expected” is a much higher bar to clear then roughly as expected.
- judge2020 3y agoWas able to do it just fine with these government files[0,1] I found on Google. Word version 16.82 on Mac (Apple Silicon too). 0: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/LI/uconsCheck.cfm?txtType=DOC&yr=1997&sessInd=0&smthLwInd=0&act=0033 https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/LI/uconsCheck.cfm.... 1: https://archive.ada.gov/briefs/andersbr.doc https://archive.ada.gov/briefs/andersbr.doc
- weinzierl 3y agoThe point made above was "opens exactly as expected". So, does it look like the authors intended in 1996? I doubt it.
- wewtyflakes 3y agoI hear that refrain often regarding Microsoft, but with games, I have not had good luck. I resort to using GOG, which itself ends up virtualizing the environment anyway. For example, I do not think anyone would have success installing the original Sim City on Windows 11.
- awkwardpotato 3y agoFallout 3 was unplayable (without mods/patches) on Windows 10 for many years because of its dependency on "Games for Windows Live" from Windows 7
- benjaminpv 3y agoYeah, people frequently trot out the Sim City classic example, but the fact is that games in particular have borne the brunt of Windows API changes. If it didn't happen we'd have no need for wrappers like dgVoodoo: software once only meant to wrap Glide calls, but now used to get around deprecation to DirectX as well. Not to mention the breaking changes to the audio stack that happened between 9x and Vista.
- weinzierl 3y agoA file that was written in Word '97 did not even open exactly as expected on two different computers 25 years ago. Formatting depended on the installed printer drivers. Good luck with that document today. My LaTeX files from 35 years ago, on the other hand - they just do fine.
- gruez 3y ago>My LaTeX files from 35 years ago, on the other hand - they just do fine. Yeah, because they're plain text. A fairer comparison would be whether they render pixel perfectly as 35 years ago, which I doubt.
- bombcar 3y agoIf you compile them to DVI you'll get the same DVI file. Compiled to PDF you might get very slight differences.
- gruez 3y ago>the same DVI file. Which is used by approximately no one. Good luck uploading your resume in DVI.
- mnw21cam 3y agoGood luck uploading your CV in PDF. I tried that a few times and got moaned at a load that my CV must be in Word format. In the end I converted the PDF into images, and created a Word document in OpenOffice (this was a while ago) with one page image per page. Got moaned at for that too.
- derefr 3y agoThe only reason they want your resume at all is to run a keyword extractor over it. If you know this, why are you making their job harder?
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
- alpaca128 3y agoA file from 1997? Maybe if you get lucky, but there's also a good chance that it will simply look wrong in any office application you try. With Word you can't even guarantee that reopening the file on the same computer & version won't change its formatting. That was the reason I learned TeX. And games? Microsoft broke numerous games by shutting down GFWL. I had to pirate Dark Souls as my original copy wasn't playable until it got re-released on Steam.
- gruez 3y ago>With Word you can't even guarantee that reopening the file on the same computer & version won't change its formatting. Source? This seems utterly bizarre.
- benjaminpv 3y agoI don't know if anything's changed but for a long time a lot of Word's formatting was impacted by the printer you had installed and/or selected. So it was pretty easy to run into scenarios on a network where printers being taken offline/their capabilities changed resulted in documents getting reformatted.
- alpaca128 3y agoDifficult to prove considering that was a decade ago, but it did happen to me. Randomly changed font in a random paragraph, randomly repositioned images, etc. Maybe I accidentally broke the document in some way, I don't know, but Word certainly failed to restore it to the exact state it was saved in, and it was always on the same PC and software.
- apetresc 3y agoBefore the new '.docx`, '.xslx', etc. formats, when it was still just .doc, .xsl, etc., the document format was (as I've heard it told) essentially just a memory dump of Word/Excel's state for that document at the time you saved. And since it's easy to imagine that serializing/deserializing such a complex thing might not be always 100% perfectly idempotent, it would indeed happen that just the act of opening a file would change it in some subtle way. That hasn't been the case in a long time, though.
- imperfectsoft 3y ago[dead]
- bakugo 3y agoI assume the negative reactions are due to the large Apple user base on HN. Most of these people are likely so used to being told "this software was built for a version of your OS released 2 years ago so you can't use it anymore, tough shit", they've come to expect it.
- pas 3y agonah, it's because all of this is just lip service. windows11 is getting worse and worse. and cool that Mr Chen thinks about UX and compatibility, but MS as whole does not really. important business apps got special treatment, and that's it. (MS and its corporate entourage solved this mostly by providing Windows and "security" patches for it, for a lot of money.)
- spiderice 3y agoYou just created a scenario in your head that confirmed an existing bias in your head and then assumed that your made up scenario matched reality. Very weird to read.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI wish this was actually truthful. I’ve had a gigantic headache getting every childhood game I kept working. In almost every case I gave up or re-bought from GOG, basically paying for the work done to sort out compatibility.
- saghm 3y agoI think the reason this is getting a negative reaction is because he doesn't really clearly state the problem he's actually trying to solve until the end (and describes it as "bonus chatter" when it's actually just a much better explanation than he gives at the top of the article). > To clear up some confusion: The idea here is that the printing API has always existed on desktop, where printing is supported, and the “get me the list of printers” function is documented not to throw an exception. If you want to port the printing API to Xbox, how do you do it in a way that allows existing desktop apps to continue to run on Xbox? The inert behavior is completely truthful: There are no printers on an Xbox. Nobody expects the answer to the question, “How many printers are there?” to be “How dare you ask me such a thing!” If he just used the words "existing desktop apps" in the second paragraph of the article instead of the second to last, I don't think people would be reacting so negatively. Instead, when he talks about avoiding "gaslighting" by returning an invalid pointer by just gaslighting in a different way by lying about the error that occurred, it almost sounds unhinged.