Subject: Re: msword doc bug
sterwill@abisource.com
Date: Wed Jan 19 2000 - 02:46:55 CST
sam th wrote:
> The bug is actually more serious than that. As far as I can tell (I have
> not looked at the code that closely) the autodetection is done by means of
> the extension only, so that when the extension doesn't represent the file
> type, it gives errors. In order to detect this, we have to actually check
> the file. This is trivial for abiword, and for rtf, and should be doable
> for others.
Yes, I just stepped through the save process in gdb in XEmacs, and there
is a point where it checks for a "last saved format", if there is one
it uses it, if not it checks the file name for extension, and if there is
no exporter for that extension, it uses AbiWord.
This causes a problem where the extension does not match the type, and
you have not done a previous save, and there is a valid exporter. The
valid exporter does not appear to be invoked in this case.
There's also a problem where the extension is not recognized for export
(like ".doc"), so AbiWord's exporter is used instead. This is bad,
and it clobbers peoples' data. We should give them a message box saying
"AbiWord is not able to save in this format. Please choose another
file type using the File->Save As menu item." In this dialog, on Unix
anyway, the user can say "yes, call it .doc, but save as RTF" (or
any other file type we save), and force it.
-- Shaw Terwilliger
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