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