On 2009-01-27, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 January 2009 06:29:55 Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2009-01-26, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > These are shared documents. I can't just change what they are
>> > based on my own preferences.
>> >
>> > I need an app that WRITES .docx. If Office 2007 is the only
>> > one that does it, so be it. But a workaround or another way to
>> > skin this cat is not what I need here.
>>
>> In my experience, finding an app that writes .docx isn't going
>> to be good enough if the documents are shared. If you're
>> exporting or importing something just one time, you can get
>> usually away with it after some minor fixing afterwards.
>>
>> But if it's a shared document and needs to be edited multiple
>> times by multiple people, you just can't get away with using
>> two different apps -- hell, not even two different versions of
>> MSWord. If you go back and forth many times, the document will
>> steadily "deteriorate" with each transition from one app to
>> another. At least that's my experience.
>
> That's pretty much the conclusion I came to as well. Thanks
> for sharing though :-)
I realize I'm arguing a moot point, but using something like
.docx for shared documents that need to be maintained by
multiple people for a long time (more than a month or two) is a
dead awful choice.
A plain ascii text file is probably the best choice for
portability and longevity. However, that suggestion's probably
not going to fly because it severly limits the amount of time
you can waste picking out eye-shatteringly ugly font
combinations and f*&king up margins, gutters, leading, and all
the other things people like to mess up rather than doing real
work.
My next choice would probably be something like RTF. If you
get into a jam it's mostly-human-readible. If you limit
yourself to simple formatting features it's about as portable
and robust as anything you can find that allows the inclusion
of graphics. The support for vector graphics (e.g. SVG) is
pretty slim, but bit-mapped graphics support works pretty well.
HTML would seem to be a good choice as well, but even more than
RTF you've got to limit what features you use. The only way to
keep the file from deteriorating into a mess is to avoid any of
"WYSIWYG" HTML editors.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! does your DRESSING
at ROOM have enough ASPARAGUS?
visi.com
