Re: About File "types" and Office 12.1 Service Pack and double-clicking



William Smith wrote:
I'm personally finding this a very interesting discussion. I can't answer all your questions and Word is not my forté. I'm sharing my observations not as an MVP but as someone who does technical support for a living.

Steve Maser wrote:

New Thread!

OK -- the argument that some MVPs have been making is that the classic
"WDBN" Word file type has been depreciated from being
double-click-opened in Office 12.1 because of some as-yet-unannounced
security issue.

Fine.

I suspect this move in 12.1.0 is one of many predecessors to the return of VBA, which was recently announced. They've removed WDBN, which means they don't want others taking advantage of that file type and allowing a malicious file to launch Word.

1) Why is the file type of "WDBN" not a security issue for Word 2004?
Which, because of the lack of VBA in Excel -- is probably going to make
Office 2004 the default Office system for quite some time...

Who knows? We may see that changed too in an update. But I doubt it. We have to keep in mind Microsoft's support life-cycle.

Office 2004 is marketed as a product that will work on Mac OS X 10.2.8 (IIRC) and higher. That means it still needs to work for older versions of the Mac OS where file type and creator are more important.

Office 2008, however, is supported only on 10.4.9 and higher. Office 2008 can begin closing old security issues, which have probably been around for quite a while. I suspect this is one of them. And Apple has long been promising that file type and creator codes would be going away. I see this move as housekeeping and a predecessor for more to come.

It's not (yet?) been made clear what the double-click-opening issue
with "WDBN" file types are that it only affects Office 2008, but not
2004. If this is an OOXML issue, will it (eventually?) hurt Office
2004 whenever the long-delayed translator for 2004 is released?

Again, I suspect this move is in preparation for something farther in the future. And we should expect more. No idea on the Office 2004 converters patch.

2) If the argument is that certain web browsers/mail programs are
doing things "wrong" about putting "old" file types on
downloaded/decoded attachments and should be leaving this *blank* and
relying on "extension" only (rather than updating for a more current
file type)...

Then why does Word 12.1:

A) Allow me to save/edit/open a word document with no extension,
without throwing up a red stop sign?

I think you can assume something like this is coming. When? I don't know.

B) Still put a "W8BN" file type on documents it saves? If they
want to lead by example, why is this not blank as well (a type is added
if I save the document with or withouth an extension.)

Probably coming too. Although Apple deprecated file type and creator codes some time ago, they still haven't removed support for them. Until that happens then Microsoft should leave this support.

However, in the meantime, Microsoft should certainly do everything it can to move its users away from what's deprecated and into what will be supported. We're in a transition period. I wouldn't expect everything to move quickly. They'll certainly want to make this as painless as possible.

C) Not allow "extensions" to override file types? -- Which would
resolve the problem (likely) for the vast amount of users. (Admittedly, I can see why this might be considered a bad idea, but...)


Why is there not internal logic in the program that says something like
"well, it's "WDBN", but it has a ".doc" extension, so we'll open it
anyway...")

Deciding which application opens which file is the Finder's responsibility. Word can't incorporate this logic. I believe that by default the Finder *still* uses type and creator codes before file extensions. That's an Apple decision and I suspect they have a time frame for changing this behavior.

So, just to restate my thoughts:

1. Expect more and similar changes.
2. Expect a *transition* and not a sudden change in behavior.
3. Expect that this is for the long term.

I see a problem with Extension only support.

Often times web and mails servers all over the US and the world Mis configure servers in such a way that a File say that is a wma/wmv file comes out as a Mov file or a dat file.

I run into this all the time where someone send a music or video file that won't open because its mislabeled. Problem is it starts off right but get chewed up somewhere in the middle.

Apple for Years in fact since at least OSX.3 is capable of reading either by Type and Creator, or by UNIX method of extension only.

One thing that can help to make sure that the correct extension is shown is when you choose to save any document the first time in any application tick the box in the lower left corner of the window that comes up. *show extensions*

No other applications for mac have the problem and Office2008 didn't until the SP1 (12.10) upgrade. So that speaks for itself. ('nother case of MS blaming Mac for something after MS did an update.

Of course I never ever send an office file directly I alway make a zip archive of it or sitx compressed file of it to send off. Usually if you do this all web/email servers pass them through with out alteration.
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