the .doc format changed incompatibly with every release
Pre-XML the .doc format was just the in-memory representation of the document serialised to disk and loading it was the converse. Conceptually you could imagine it like mmap(). It was different between versions because the code was different, not by any deliberate effort.
Pre-XML the .doc format was just the in-memory representation of the document serialised to disk and loading it was the converse. Conceptually you could imagine it like mmap(). It was different between versions because the code was different, not by any deliberate effort.