Hacker News Reader

Comment by atirip | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if im wrong - no computer out of the box can not open Australian Govt documents anymore?

Every computer that has access to the internet can open them in Google Docs. Every Tablet or Smartphone with Polaris Office can. Every Chromebook can.

Also in what way would the Microsoft "Standard" be different?

Only for the MS time limited crapware installed on all the Windows Laptops?

I can open any MS Word document with any computer out of the box. Without installing _any_ crap or having account at Gevil (and uploading anything). On OSX Textedit, on Windows Wordpad, and so on. On iOS any MS doc as attachment. In that way Microsoft Standard is different, i can view the docs without doing nothing, only "standard" ODF documents i can not view on standard computer.

Texedit on Mac opens ODT, as does Wordpad on Windows.

While word pad did add support for docx files in Windows 7, I wonder how good a viewer it is for viewing complex documents that have complex formatting applied. I do not know but I suspect that the results may be less than stellar. I suspect the same is true for the other programs as well.

I know MS published docx as an open spec but in my experience I find that only MS programs are able to maintain document fidelity in viewing the documents. When you use other viewers there is almost always something that looks a little off.

Does anyone know why you don't have same viewing results for complex docx documents when viewed under different viewers ?

> Correct me if im wrong ...

You're wrong.

Wordpad on Windows and TextEdit on OS X can open .odt files. I've just tested in Mountain Lion and Windows 7 to verify it.

I think you misunderstood his double negative - it translates to 'all computers can open AU Gov documents out of the box now?' and I think you are agreeing with him that this is true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com