Rattle wrote:
] I need to vent.
]
] This sounds interesting, however I can't open the documents.
] The HTML protocol description isn't that helpful for getting
] the big picture, and the word documents crash my copy of MS's
] OSX Word. MS's formats are not cross platform, even using
] their own products on both platforms. I have the same problem
] with some WMA using OSX Windows Media Player. All this MS
] crap simply DOES NOT WORK.
]
] Are PDFs that hard to make? Seriously.

This document was pubished in 1997, and it was in development for several years before that. This was the period of time when PostScript was really still the domain of academia and didn't work consistently everywhere, and Adobe was starting to push PDF but it was a proprietary format and didn't work consistently everywhere. While I agree that today it would be ridiculous to put out a word document, this thing is from the mid-nineties. In 1996 you used word for things like this. It was the lesser of the evils.

MS probably didn't QA the version of word you're running against a document this old. They probably don't have a test case for "legacy" word docs on Macs. They probably should. This example might, in fact, get their attention, as this is a rather famous document.

RE: Secure Electronic Transaction Specification