FinalWriter bounty?

[pVC]

Trying to add compatibility for modern formats might (??) to an older codebase might be easier than trying to port more modern (and bloated IMHO) programs...

If we want compatibility with modern formats it might be a massive project with eternal bug fixing with the old programs which weren't designed for that in the first place. Stretching old programs with patch over patch doesn't sound very good option in my opinion. Especially with the amount of coders we'd have for those kinds of projects... they probably lost their interest even before it gets anywhere near the specs of the modern programs.

I think it would be better to port some modern software, even if it's a big job at first. But if the port gets made, then it already has pretty good compatibility with modern formats and maybe applying the new changes would be easier in future.

[pVC]

Are we doing this for what we need?  Or are we doing this to reach the "specs of the modern programs"?  Those might be very different things...

I think this whole fuss is about having program with compatibility with modern programs and their formats. And I think that requires that most features have to be supported then. I think they save pretty complex things in their doc files and all those should be reproduceable on our programs. So, we have to reach their standards... and that is a really big job to write from scratch or glue into old software.

If there wouldn't be desire for compatibility, then Final Writer and other old programs would be just fine for the needs of the most people.

And I've always been a fan of native code for native OS/hardware for speed and simplicity...

Me too, but in some cases it's just not possible with today's requirements and resources. Many things have ran away from single/small coder base project's capabilities. Like with movie players, browsers... and I think with this office/wp case too.