ThingsWeWontDo

Things that We Won't Do

There are a number of things that are too difficult to implement, or that the EWG has discussed and rejected. Submitting a feature request for one of these things will cause it to be immediately rejected.

The detailed list, with explanations, is as follows:

Port the tools to a different progamming language: The choice of C# and .NET was taken after a lot of investigation and even some initial C++ experimental implementations. The tools use Microsoft Office Interop to manipulate the Microsoft Office Word and Excel artifacts. Although Interop can be used in other languages, .NET languages make it considerably easier. Again Interop is not the only way to manipulate Microsoft Office Word and Excel documents but it simplifies access to different versions (for instance, the Microsoft Word document format changed between Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007, both versions being commonly used by EWG members. Not using Interop would require two separate implementations, using interop simplifies this considerably). Changing this would mean a complete rewrite of the ESI tool set

Port the tools to a different operating system: This is really tied to the choice of C# and .NET explained in the previous paragraph. The tools may work using Mono under the Linux operating system (we would be interested in reports of any experiments in this area), however any operating system that cannot run Microsoft Office would not be able to run the tools.