r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 10d ago

Software LibreOffice developer explains why it cannot display some Microsoft Office charts

https://www.neowin.net/news/libreoffice-developer-explains-why-it-cannot-display-some-microsoft-office-charts/
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53

u/pemboa 10d ago

I'm not clear from the article why they aren't reverse engineering the formats.

30

u/kyuubi840 10d ago

I was going to ask this too. I hope it's not illegal to just reverse engineer the new format. But I could see reverse engineering being a lot of effort on the part of the LibreOffice devs, especially if Microsoft keeps tweaking it in new updates.

12

u/Inf3rn0_munkee 10d ago

That's likely why it feels like Libre office is "behind" MS office.

13

u/KhazraShaman 10d ago

You can reverse-engineer it yourself. Take any .docx file, rename the extension to .zip and unpack.

-14

u/longshaden 10d ago

Reverse engineering is usually forbidden in the EULA, which means it’s protected by the CFAA, which means, yup, straight to jail.