Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Alternatives To .DOC As Standard WP Format?

Posted by Cliff on from the when-a-closed-solution-just-isn't-good-enough dept.

D. C. Sessions asks: "I'm on the Software Task Group of a standards body (JEDEC) which is, among other things, responsible for the DDR memory standard. You may have heard of it. Currently standards drafts must be submitted in an editable word processing format, which right now is interpreted as FrameMaker or MS Word. I find not only offensive, but dangerous that these standards -should- outlive the current MS software that can manipulate them. I've gotten some sympathy on 'bit rot' from the rest of the committee based on showing what current flavors of Word do to documents saved with older versions, but the problem is this: What do I propose as a replacement?" Two that come to mind right off of the top of my head are LaTeX and, of course, HTML. Any other formats that can work just as well as .DOC in most situations and are cross-platform to boot?

"It should (obviously) be an open file format, preferably with an open source tool to access it. It absolutely must be usable on LoseBlows, should be usable on Mac, and (for my own sake) on Linux and Solaris. It must be capable of structured documentation, numbering, tables, and embedded vector graphics. I just don't know of such a beast at present."

3 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. SGML/XML/DocBook by tobyjaffey · · Score: 5

    Use a nice SGML/XML application like DocBook. Tools for manipulation are free, anyone can write DocBook, with or without specialist tools (it looks a lot like HTML to the layman).

    Don't use HTML, at least use XHTML making sure that you segregate style from content. If you must use HTML, use stylesheets so that formatting is consistent.

    But, my recommendation would be to use DocBook (SGML) and use stylesheets and nice free parsers to output TeX, ASCII, RTF, HTML and whatever else people want.

  2. Re:It may seem incredibly redundant... by dbarclay10 · · Score: 5

    I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

    XML is nothing more than a concept - you store data and text within "tags". The tags can be of pretty much any name. The data can be anything. This isn't a standard, it's not even a format.

    Basically, XML boils down to: store it in a text file, delimit data, fields, and content by tags. Sorry, that doesn't cut it. You have to do more.

    No, if you want to think about using XML for this, you need to talk about the DTD, not XML itself.

    So, the question becomes, which DTD? In order to compete with the competition(LaTeX, HTML, PostScript), it has to be: device-independant, easily rendered, easily edited, and extremelycomprehensive.

    Don't shout "XML!!". XML, without a DTD, is almost useless, especially for this application. The DTD has to be all those things I mentioned, plus(for this application), it needs to be standard.

    Dave

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)

    --

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)
  3. LoseBlows by aphr0 · · Score: 5

    Thanks for showing the maturity everyone has come to expect from the linux community.

    Hey linsux users - grow up.