How freakin' hard is it to support your own product, Bill?

[dr_kromm]

SJ Games has always demanded Word 6.0/95 files from its authors and editors. The reasons boil down to "This version is compatible with any PC or Mac that still runs." That's okay, I guess. I formerly used Word 2000, and then 2003, but it was never a problem to warp back to 1995 . . . shoot, Descent was pretty cool back in the day, too.

Anyway, my new PC has Word 2007. Which is awesome, incidentally. It's many times faster and more stable than Word 2000 or 2003 ever was, and personally, I like the interface. There's just one hitch: It cannot save in Word 6.0/95 format. I don't mean that it's less-than-perfect or requires an add-in -- I mean, you can't do it.

Well, not quite. Apparently, if you've got the volume-licensed Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and install a special admin tool, you can, via the Office Configuration Tool, enable a "Save As" option that outputs Word 6.0/95. So it's possible in the sense that the converter is lurking in there somewhere, just not in the sense that plebes like me, with lowlier editions (see here), can use it. Argh.

So now I have to figure out how to fix this headache, which of course Microsoft doesn't want me to do. Argh!

Comments

[hackard.livejournal.com]

I don't know when the last Quark upgrade was, except that it was after 2004. We went from mostly 3.1 to 4.x during the time I was there. But I'm pretty sure they're on Quark 6 now. Phil or Will could tell you for sure and probably could tell you which versions of Word the program can handle.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Nikki says the lads mostly use QuarkXPress 6 in house, but that she's using Quark 7. I see from the Quark site that not even Quark 8 imports Word 2007/2008 yet. Fortunately, Nikki is the only person I deal with much re: any of this stuff. Now I just have to figure out how to send files to my freelancers who've mostly not updated Word because SJ Games was always happy with 6.0/95 . . .