What about those which developed products with similar features while the patent was under examination?

To they just put their blueprints in the bin and try to find another idea?

I'm actually quite interested, if anyone has an idea, in the answer to this question: if you release a product before you get the patent, and concurent makers release similar products before said patent is granted, doesn't that constitute prior art?

Working in a research lab, we are regularly reminded that we should not publish patentable ideas before having patented them, as such publication would constitute prior art voiding any subsequent patent.

Anybody has clarifications?

I never got the point of digital cameras making a (badly recorded and replayed) camera sound when they @$%$$%$# don't need to. This is always the first âoefeatureâ (though I would call it a bug) that I disable. Then I can start using it.

I can definitely get the point of such a law-enforced feature. But being supported by law won't make it any less anoying. One can hope this will be implemented using a separate speaker. At least a soldering iron-operated switch could be considered, then.

For a while, I've been using the Linbox Converter [0]. Running on a dedicated Windows server with MS Office installed, it can convert documents sent over the network into âoecleanâ PDFs by print-to-file'ing them, and sending them back.

This is not exactly what's required here, as I suppose the documents have to be editable. The glue to make the system run, however, is mostly written in Python. This may make adding functions like saving as an earlier version of the format (âoebye bye OpemXMLâ) quite easy to implement.

There are Unix and Windows clients available at [0], but I once did a bit of packaging to make the installation of clients easier [1].

(Disclaimer: I once was an intern at Linbox, and did not conduct an unbiased survey of such solutions before deciding to use the aforementionned one. It turned out to work well enough for my needs, though.)

[0] http://www.linbox.com/en/converter
[1] http://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=424&release_id=897

I thought so by reading the post, but the linked articles shows that it's not the case.

I still think a Dasher-like system may be a viable input system for keyboard-less devices, though. Modulo some fine tuning, of course...