ms word vs html ?

Christopher Wagner chrisw at pacaids.com
Tue Oct 1 17:58:03 PDT 2002


Honestly, you probably won't wow them..  Most of the advantages of doing
something like this are fairly transparent to the user.  They just see it
work like they think it should and have no clue about the back-end of it. :)
>From my observation, many people just believe they are too "computer
incompetent" to understand what goes on in the backend, M$ seems to just
enforce this belief in people with the way their programs work.  This is
merely a mental block on their part and is possible to overcome.

My recommendation:
I would focus not necessarily on the versatility of it, but more on the time
saved for the creation and for future revisions, point out that it's
compatible with everything, but don't make it a focus point.

XML is very flexible, it would be one of my primary choices for something
like this.  Another choice would be LaTeX, as Eric suggested.  I'm not sure
what would be best for your project because I'm not clear on the intended
use.  If you'd like to provide these on a website, XML is most likely your
best bet.

Someone mentioned .rtf files earlier.  They do allow for slightly better
portability than .doc files, but aren't nearly as flexible as HTML or XML
for portability.  It's kind of a silly format I think, though.

Anyway..  Thanks for listening to my two cents. :)

- Christopher Wagner
chrisw at pacaids.com

Packaging Aids Corporation - Information Systems
P.O. Box 9144
San Rafael, CA 94912-9144
http://www.pacaids.com/
(415) 454-4868 x116


-----Original Message-----
From: augie [mailto:schwer at sonic.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 9:32 AM
To: talk at nblug.org
Subject: Re: ms word vs html ?


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On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 02:32:23AM -0700, error wrote:
> My friend who will not join this discussion agrees with eric on the idea
> of XML. I also think XML is useful. However I feel that the end user
> writing the document might be squimish unless you are running linux (and
> you are considering .doc so that might not be an option.).
> If you can go with xml do it it is the way to go.
> Then you can run one script that converts your documentation to
> everything else, pdf, rtf, html, ascii art :)

well you've piqued my intrest about xml. but i don't know much about
xml, what are its advantages over html, and specifically what would be
better about it in this instance?

since most likely i'll be the one who is the XML/HTML Editor running
some software like DocBook wouldn't be a problem.

so it may be that i don't win the open vs proprietary standards war
this time, but perhaps i can wow them with the versitility of open
standards with something like docbook.

ps...thanks to everyone for their responses! :)

 -augie


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