delaney@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (John Delaney) (12/22/87)
I would like to hear about any experiences people have creating documents using Word 3.01 on a Mac, writing them out as DCA formated files (a Word option), transfering those files to a PC, and then editing the documents using WordPerfect on an IBM PC or PC clone. In particular, I would like to know what features of a complex document survive such a transfer intact, which do not but can be fixed with a little work on the PC, and which are hopelessly garbled. Why? You can probably guess; I bet the story is quite familiar. Our group got a few Macs. Some of us started using them to prepare documents and the like, editing them ourselves. It was faster than hand-writing them or printing the Mac-produced files and then having a secretary type them into an archaic, Brand X, stand-alone word-processor (adding typo's along the way). Middle management noticed this situation and decided it was not cost-effective. They replaced the secretaries' archaic, Brand X, stand-alone word-processors. But not with Macs. They replaced them with PC clones running WordPerfect. They also want to replace our Macs with PC clones so we can run WordPerfect for document creation and pass the files to the secretaries for further editing. We Mac users would rather not give up our Macs. One option is to buy copies of WordPerfect for the Mac when it is shaken-down. But middle management, having tolerated the archaic, Brand X, stand-alone, word-processors for many years now feels an urgent need to set things right IMMEDIATELY. An interim measure would appear to be using DCA as an intermediate format for moving document files back and forth. If that works tolerably well.