Re: How to document for html and Word -- don't imitate MS's goofs (fwd)

From: Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:34:19 EST

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    forwarding, i replied offlist by mistake

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 14:30:07 +0000 (GMT)
    From: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>
    To: Dominic Amann <dominic@lbs.ca>
    Subject: Re: How to document for html and Word -- don't imitate MS's goofs

    On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Dominic Amann wrote:

    > Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 08:30:28 -0500
    > From: Dominic Amann <dominic@lbs.ca>
    > To: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>
    > Subject: Re: How to document for html and Word -- don't imitate MS's goofs

    <snip>

    > In any case, my own experience supporting a variety of word processors
    > leads me to state the saving a file as a ".doc" offers no assurance of
    > compatibility even from one version of MS Word to another, and only
    > limited compatibility between other word processors. The safest file
    > format in my experience has been the ".rtf" format. Also, the ".abw"

    True.

    In abiword .doc is actually just .rtf renamed to .doc
    Historically in msword .doc could be .txt .rtf and other formats but with
    a differnet file extension, so msword has to be able to handle this quirk
    and to most users it makes no difference (and in fact i actually prefer to
    use rtf renamed to .doc for best portability).

    There is some work under way to allow exporting to binary native
    Microsoft Word .doc, it is in the
    Unstable CVS versions.

    Sincerely

    Alan Horkan
    http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

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