yvw@gmdzi.UUCP (Yvo Van Wezemael) (01/18/89)
At least once in a month someone asks for the file-format of a
particular wordprocessor-file (MS Word, MacWrite,...). In most cases
these people want to create output to files containing some
formatting/styles from databases. (Me too was one of them.) Because of
the complexity of these formats, most people end up with something
like using MakeWrite for MacWrite, RTF format for MSWord (rest I don't
know). So I ask myself if there isn't a need for some 'standard'
file-format, which can be expected to be read by most wordprocessors.
This would make life much more easier. Even if it wouldn't be 'the'
standard, one or two widely accepted formats would make it.
The best solution I know so far is the RTF format (though I'm not
really a MS Word fan), easy to generate and gives me all what I need.
Want do you think of that? I would like to see some discussion on this
point. Or did I miss some obvious solution?
--- Yvo
--
Yvo Van Wezemael:
German National Research Laboratory for Computer Science (GMD)
P.O. Box 1240 (Schloss Birlinghoven) D-5205 Sankt Augustin 1
phone: (+49 2241) 142422 yvw@gmdzi.UUCP uucibg@sw1e.UUCP (3929] Brian Gilstrap) (01/20/89)
In article <955@gmdzi.UUCP> yvw@gmdzi.UUCP (Yvo Van Wezemael) writes: >At least once in a month someone asks for the file-format of a >particular wordprocessor-file (MS Word, MacWrite,...). > > [ some material deleted to save bandwidth ] > >..........one or two widely accepted formats would make it. >The best solution I know so far is the RTF format (though I'm not >really a MS Word fan), easy to generate and gives me all what I need. > >Want do you think of that? I would like to see some discussion on this >point. Or did I miss some obvious solution? > I really like this suggestion. I use MSWord and like its ability to save in various formats. However, as Yvo points out, there are many different WPs and many different formats. It seems like a pretty tough problem to tackle in some ways. How do you handle features that one WP supports and another doesn't? It may not always be a simple "ignore it" since there may be dependencies between features. If this is to occur, we might want to consider making it compatible with some sort of overall standards for text, graphics, voice, etc. I recognize that that's a whole lot to tackle and I'm not recommending that we go out and write a bunch of standards. However, it would probably behoove us greatly to look around and see what's already available (as was suggested by Yvo). Since I work in a primarily itty-bitty machine shop, I am aware of DCA (Document Content Architecture?), though I don't know if it's specific to the IBM world or if it was created by someone else. I also know of GML (Generalized Markup Language) although I know even less about it (my knowledge just about stops at the name). Are there international standards? It might seem foolish to worry so much about just getting Mac WPs to trade WP documents. But it would be nice if we could trade documents with other than the Mac world. And it would be a real pain to get this gee-whiz standard set up and then discover that we'll have to do it all over again because the world is going with format XYZ which is totally incompatible with "ours". Just a suggestion. I'll stop rambling now.... :-) >-- >Yvo Van Wezemael: > German National Research Laboratory for Computer Science (GMD) > P.O. Box 1240 (Schloss Birlinghoven) D-5205 Sankt Augustin 1 > phone: (+49 2241) 142422 yvw@gmdzi.UUCP Brian R. Gilstrap Southwestern Bell Telephone One Bell Center Rm 17-G-4 ...!ames!killer!texbell!sw1e!uucibg St. Louis, MO 63101 ...!bellcore!texbell!sw1e!uucibg (314) 235-3929 #include <std_disclaimers.h>