Comment by whatthesmack
9 years ago
From the article:
> While Office has had a new Equation Editor integrated since at least version 2007, Microsoft can't simply remove EQNEDT32.EXE (the old Equation Editor) from Office as there are probably tons of old documents out there containing equations in this old format, which would then become un-editable.
Ah. missed that. But obviously I'd be very happy for this program to be patched by replacing it with this program:
Becuase there comes a point in time when any time you bump into an equation like this, it's actually more likely to be a malicious one.
Even better if they could at least render the old equation statically using the new office, but not edit it. Then it would be almost insanely rare that anyone needs the old editor.
This is the kind of thing that can rapidly escalate to a CTO asking his Microsoft sales VP why he's spending $18M/year on upgrade and support contracts when a report that's worked "forever" can start talking back like Clippy.
Microsoft doesn't preserve backward compatibility because they're stubborn; it's a key part of their value proposition to some of their biggest clients.
This is the thing: I'm also a paying customer, I just don't pay as much. But I'd like to pay for more security/less compatibility, instead of the other way around.
This should also be very easy to do e.g. by noticing whether you are in a setting where there is any risk of the scenario you say. If it's a home machine for example, then don't worry about compatibility, focus on security.
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