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Comment by trezor | Hacker News Reader

As far as I see this, he admits the problem at the end: Microsoft Word is a Word Processing program, not a publishing program.

You are not guaranteed to have your layout preserved when printing. This can be for a variety of reasons, but it could be simple stuff like having your file in A4-format and your printer only having papers of type "Letter" or something equally silly. In cases like these, Word is forced to reformat.

If you need or rely on a 100% accurate re-representation of your content, Word should not be your tool. Never. Use PDFs. Simple as that. If you are writing a normal texts however, it will probably never be a real problem which you will even notice.

Now, my question to the author (should he check out HN): How on earth is this related to OOXML? Where is the smoking gun saying this is a bug in the file-format? I honestly don't see it, and I don't see anyone else here questioning this unbacked claim.

I honestly expected better from HN.

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Check the article again. It's not about layout preserved when printing, it's about actual spaces being deleted in the editor and then kept deleted when you save the file.

Maybe I need to spell it for you and those downvoting the OP. The headline says 'Open XML' (implying a bug in the standard format) whereas the article is talking about Office 2007 and Office 2010. See the difference?

It's the implementation of the standard in Office 2007 and 2010

So a more appropriate title could be 'Microsoft's Office embarassment' ? Or not?

I think MS Office Open XML and MS Office are pretty much very related. Nobody would implement that standard if it weren't for Microsoft pushing it.

And the title implies that, apart from MS Office Open XML, Office is not embarrassing. One may disagree with that implication, but the title is more specific.

There is a big difference between a file format and the program that makes use of it(even though they are related and even if the same entity developed both) that you're failing to grasp in multiple comments.

If you read the title carefully, you may also interpret as Microsoft's Open XML embarrassment. Since I am unaware of other Microsoft products that implement the standard, I see no problem with the title. It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing to Microsoft and it's about MS Office Open XML.

These look like implementation defects to me. I do not know if the problem is in Word 2010, or Word 2007, or both. It is specific to Open XML since if you use the .doc format the problem goes away. It is embarrassing since Open XML is meant to the new and better format, and this is a good reason not to use it.

"If you need or rely on a 100% accurate re-representation of your content, Word should not be your tool. Never. Use PDFs."

Or a Mac.

Yeah, bugs never happen on a Mac.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=379084

Interesting to be downvoted even when HN requires 500 karma to get downvote rights. Sorry for stepping on the toes of Apple fan club members.

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