>> It's not really an issue anymore.
> Yes it is. It's the 21st century, we have had word processors for yonks > and there is still no stable open document exchange standard that is widely > used (SGML could have been it but it aint). I NEED one, we all need one > but consumers are too blinkered to see that they need to demand one. Yes, it is. I overstated the case by a long way. It is not an issue for *me* with the files I handle, but who could disagree that we need a common standard. One of the most frustrating things for me is writing large pieces in LaTeX and then trying to convert to something that a publisher can read. Legal publishers don't have a *clue* about how to handle anything other than MS documents. LaTeX to RTF converters are the only choice, but they are far from perfect. Unless there is a common exchange standard, any converter is likely to be imperfect. I'm not quite sure why SGML has failed so miserably to provide the standard. Part of it is that (most) SGML documentation is hopelessly obscure to anyone without some training in formal languages. Part of it is that SGML is too general, so that finding a common basis for exchange using SGML is almost as hard as the original problem. Anyway, between using SO 5.2 and Wine, I have found that I can handle all the Word docs that I need to handle. The situation is much better than a year ago, but I definitely agree with Mike's comments. Cheers, Alan -- ------------------------------------------------------ Alan L Tyree [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/~alant Tel: +61 2 4782 2670 Mobile: +61 419 638 170 Fax: +61 2 4782 7092 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
