Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on October 08, 2005 05:36 AM
This is so true and has already happened on such a large scale that it amazes me that people constantly forget it.
WAY WAY back in 1995 when the domination of WordPerfect was waxing and everyone was trying to convert to MS Word, the biggest problem was the thousands or millions of heavily used WordPerfect macros that did not work in MS Word. It was a huge problem that required the manual conversion of the macros and millions of documents that used them. After years of conversions, most people had switched to Word and they started the mistakes all over again with the use of Visual Basic for Applications(VBA). VBA is the dominant macro/scripting language today, simply because the vast majority of people use Word or MS Office but, if they ever want to switch, they face a major problem with the lack of compatibility between VBA and whatever else.
I can't imagine any business spending the money required to convert their VBA to OpenOffice Basic. But, even if they did, it would be a big mistake. Sooner or later, they will want to switch again, even if it is to OpenOffice V25 and the macros/scripts will be a problem. The problem will be so large as to impede their decision to switch which ironically, is where we are today. Businesses today are unwilling to consider switching to OpenOffice because converting macros and VBA apps is either impossible or so labor intensive as to make the costs unbearable.
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Re:portability warning
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on October 08, 2005 05:36 AMWAY WAY back in 1995 when the domination of WordPerfect was waxing and everyone was trying to convert to MS Word, the biggest problem was the thousands or millions of heavily used WordPerfect macros that did not work in MS Word. It was a huge problem that required the manual conversion of the macros and millions of documents that used them. After years of conversions, most people had switched to Word and they started the mistakes all over again with the use of Visual Basic for Applications(VBA). VBA is the dominant macro/scripting language today, simply because the vast majority of people use Word or MS Office but, if they ever want to switch, they face a major problem with the lack of compatibility between VBA and whatever else.
I can't imagine any business spending the money required to convert their VBA to OpenOffice Basic. But, even if they did, it would be a big mistake. Sooner or later, they will want to switch again, even if it is to OpenOffice V25 and the macros/scripts will be a problem. The problem will be so large as to impede their decision to switch which ironically, is where we are today. Businesses today are unwilling to consider switching to OpenOffice because converting macros and VBA apps is either impossible or so labor intensive as to make the costs unbearable.
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