Abiword, wvWare And KWord Authors To Collaborate 97
An anonymous reader writes: "One important aspect of Free software is open collaboration and the pooling of efforts. There are several open source word processors available and they all need to import and export the ubiquitous MS Word format. To try and avoid duplicating efforts, developers from the Abiword, wvWare and Kword projects have been talking with regard to pooling their efforts in
writing filters."
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
IMHO,
Personally, I use XEmacs to write all my papers in various SGML DTD's, and I couldn't be happier.
News Flash! (Score:4)
(it's about bloody time
See OpenDWG for success (Score:1)
Mikael
Re: Then We Need Meta-Tools/Techniques (Score:1)
Actually, I would estimate the complexity of the Word format as greater than that of the English language (even including all the variants). It's the most incomprehensibly complicated, poorly documented (and frequently misdocumented), train wreck of a file format in the history of this universe, which no one could ever possibly hope to merely even make hypothetical conjectures at its actual implementation. It is a manifestation of evil; there is no other explanation. (By the way, I have code in wvWare.)
Lyx does this (Score:2)
hawk
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:1)
Another advantage of this approach would be that all the word processors could use the same (or a very similar) filter to and from other non-*nix software. Sounds like a good idea to me.
BTW, doesn't Open Office use a compressed XML file to store it's documents? I thought I read something about Word2K using XML as well, but I could be wrong there. All that being said to say this: Isn't one of the promises of XML supposed to be improved sharing of data? This could be a good use...
Free Office suites already use XML (Score:2)
1. Create a file.kwd in KWord. Make it complex and add pictures and stuff.
2. Rename it to file.tgz
3. Uncompressed and untar it and viola, you have an XML document and a bunch of picture files etc...
The rest of KOffice works this way. Negotiations are still on to get all the Free office suites on Linux to unite on a single file format. I like the KOffice scheam because it inherently produces small files (already compressed). Others have favorites.
As for filters. I think we should have a separate program for importing the dreaded *.doc files and have all the office suites call this program for that task. Why should they all waste time redoing the same function that we would prefer not be needed at all? (I.e. MSWord not so cumbersome and convoluted in it's document formats)
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:2)
They should also merge with "antiword" (Score:5)
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:2)
No, this is an apalling design, and it's the same flaw from which gnumeric suffers:
By all means use a compressed save format, but don't just gzip XML, a tar file or some other standard format. Every application should have it's own unique file format header, that's easily parsable by file(1). Otherwise, we're headed down the windows road, where the only way to identify a file is by its extension, and that's somewhere I really don't want to go. I'd be quite happy if gnumeric/kword used a header to say "the following block in this file is N bytes long and is a zlib compressed XML reqpresentation of the data". But just using gzip plain sucks.Re:Error in article (Score:1)
This is all well and good (and I used to do it myself at school, where I am more or less justified in demanding that stuff be available to Unix users). However, using linux at work is very different. If everyone you work with is using some MS crap, the only way you can reasonably expect people to let you keep using linux is if you don't cause any hassle for anybody else. This means converting the docs yourself, either using your owm copy of MS Word (which was installed on the partition of your disk that you shrank to make room for a linux or BSD system :).
I was in that position last summer, and I had to use Wine (for Lotus Notes, which is actually an interesting program), and boot into windoze every now and then to use excel. Lotus Notes mostly works with wine, and has an excel and word viewer, so that saved some rebooting. Converters like antiword are also useful. I sent stuff to other people in HTML format or just ASCII email, since the stuff I had to write was only stuff like short reports on technical stuff. I would have pulled out LaTeX and made a PDF if necessary.
#define X(x,y) x##y
XML more than formatting (Score:1)
Problem that requires solving is not to replicate the type of replacement but to alter the interface of wordprocessors so that they allow you to highlight structures such as chapters and sub chapters, and so forth. None are offering this at all.
They don't allow you to apply your
The current free offerings perpetuate the visual only representation of data.
While its true that with some farting around you can write additional xsl to transform simple markup ito something else, in practice this hard: you have to make assumptions like when you see this means insert another etc. Always breaks.
You may as well stick to html with embedded css if you don't allow external dtds.
Jonathan
xml and html and java have nowt in common (Score:1)
HTML is a visual markup language concentrating on the concept of bigger and larger fonts, laying out the page etc.
XML does not inherently define layout - but it does allow at least one further tool to make layout happen. Typically this is xslt (there are others) and the output will probably html but could equally by more xml, rtf, pdf, ascii, csv, sql etc etc.
You *use* the processing lang you already know to manipulate the xml data. Thus all the biggies have or are soon to get the tools needed to use xml.
Thus you transform xml using an xslt processor itself written in java, python or c.
XML's implementation often proves the point that standards are often best written slightly afterthe fact but it really is usable now in a way that seemd very distant only a few years ago when the hype was *really* crazy
Smart (Score:4)
It's about time... (Score:2)
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:1)
I read this yesterday or two days ago. (Score:5)
So there would be 3 different efforts still, but they would share knowledge with each other.
So what will they do when MS.net is up and open and people are using that?
Just imagine MS having access to your internal internet....
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Re:I read this yesterday or two days ago. (Score:1)
Actually, they said something more like that if the library ever did come to fruition it would probably be C++ based, but provide C methods for accessing the functionality.
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Re:?? (Score:2)
How can the Slashdot editors criticize web-porn filters and Napster filters for blocking the wrong people when they do it themselves?
Dump the braindead heuristics. If you really want to curb AC abuse, make it so that AC posts don't appear on the main page until a logged-in user "adopts" the post and any karmic moderation that gets done to it.
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This is dumb (Score:1)
C/C++/Java whatever. Doesn't it make sense to make something like a document transformer into a small CORBA service, talk XML for the result document and then we don't have the non-sensical language wars. I don't need to know that the document tranform was coded in language X. I just want it to work dammit.
Re:This is dumb (Score:1)
Re:Lag? (Score:1)
Playing catch-up doesn't help set standards or even acquire market share
You're right. What I'm imagining is similar to what happened when the IBM PC BIOS was reverse-engineered: once we have very good compatibility, we can set the new standard. People (avg office-worker people) are sick of Word's Feature-itis anyway, and wouldn't it be compelling for a company to get to stop paying for Office entirely -- and just use, oh, AbiWord? Fast, efficient, does what you want it to, compatible with the Word everyone uses (95, 97), and free.
Not to mention: I really have doubts about companies wanting to store their documents on Microsoft servers across the internet, which is what MS is apparently planning.
Side note: never thought about this before, but just imagine: with the DMCA, reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS would be illegal, wouldn't it? No PC clones! I have to admit, sometimes I'm only inches from becoming a Libertarian.
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Re:I thought Open Office had already this ? (Score:5)
All of them already have some form of import/export. The problem is: they all suck.
But imagine the threat to Microsoft if any of them -- muchless all of them -- could import and export MS Word documents perfectly.
What a world it could be, Microsoft-free.
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Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:2)
Yeah, imagine what a horrible world it would be if everyone used the same format and we could interchange documents without any problems.
Uh, only if we're all using the same very latest version of Word on the same very latest version of Windows, on the same Microsoft-approved Intel-supplied hardware -- and then we get to play a big game of Simon Says -- "Microsoft says: okay everybody, time to upgrade, please enter your credit card number here."
I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that Microsoft has just as much right as anyone else to set standards.
The problem is that their "standards" follow the form of "here's our magic new standard format, it'll sorta do most of what you need, but only if you use it with our software. Don't bother trying to figure out the details of the format, because we'll change it at our whim, every so often, just to make sure that no one else's software will work with it. Even older versions of our own software won't work the the latest format, so everyone in your company will have to upgrade."
Microsoft doesn't have standards, they have proprietary formats. They don't want to promote and use open standards, they want to own the "standards". If they were willing/able to play well with others, they wouldn't be as hated as they are today.
I thought Open Office had already this ? (Score:4)
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:1)
I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that Microsoft has just as much right as anyone else to set standards.
Of course they have a right to propose standards for everyone to use. The trouble is, what they call a "standard" is usually a moving target.
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:1)
Hey, if this were the case, I would be happy. My point is that you can't even interchange documents among different versons of Office.
Plus, as speaking as somebody that has actually had to work on the DOC files, I'd much rather a common standard be due to some merit other than monopoly bullying.
If the unified document format needs to be extendend, the desktop environment groups can get together and agree on something so the file format will remain consistent. Good luck getting that from Microsoft.
How about having a unified format? (Score:5)
The reason while Word's DOC format is so important is because it's the de-facto standard in the Windows world. I'm hoping we're not looking to make it the standard *nix world, too.
So, it just makes sense that all the developers get together and agree on a standard format so whether or not my coworkers and I are using Gnome or KDE or whatever, we don't have to go through yet ANOTHER set of filters.
Re:I read this yesterday or two days ago. (Score:1)
1) We're going to use C++, and maybe do a C api too
2) We're going to use libole2
3) Should we need an XML parser, we'll use libxml2
There will be very little duplication of effort. Abi and KWord will both use libwv2.so and have their own filters that hook up to libwv, but the majority (98%) will be entirely shared, just like is the case with and shared library usage.
Dom
Re:Word Perfect 2000 (Score:1)
Not to troll but... (Score:1)
What about reverse engineering catdoc [davecentral.com] or Word2X [alcom.co.uk]? I've been able able to open Word files without a problem with them, and when I need to save I download the files to my laptop as text to save them under Mickeysoft, otherwise I try to save them with StarOffice (which borks things out every here and there).
The program could use existing code with a tcl or Python shell to get it done, maybe someone should contact the authors of the programs (Word2X, Catdoc) and come up with a collaboration.
Lock stock and 2 smoking barrels... (Score:2)
Ok this is probably way off topic, well it is, but I'll put some of my strong points on my arguements over XML, which are strongly opinionated (as is everyone's). One of the biggest problems I've seen with XML is that, many have already created massive content on existing languages, whether its XML, Python, Perl, HTML, and many have invested a large amount of money into the already existing languages.
In order for a company to feasibly make the move over from $INSERT_LANGUAGE_HERE over to XML would mean that their programmers would have to know it meaning it would cost them more to pay for their education in it (even though they could learn online please here this out) or hire someone familiar with XML.
Looking at the current scenario, many companies have done well without it, not to say it shouldn't be used, but just to give everyone a reminder on it. It's always going to be an extremely opinionated arguement, and points/counterpoints could run on for years. Same arguements go for JAVA and others, you don't neccessarily need them for one, and just because someone uses X or X becomes a pseudo standard should not mean that programmers should focus on X and forget the core basics of it all.
UML, XML, HTML, CSS, COOL, JAVA, it all boils down to needs, and XML is not really a neccessity, and soon there'll be another acronym toting the same claims as the existing ones, "The Next Best (overhyped) Thing"
Sorry if I sound like a troll I'm trying to be as sincere as possible about my thoughts on it, without sounding anti-anything (XML, or other) just my notes on it. I think the programmers should stick with the basics without getting all fancy.
jumping the gun (Score:5)
Your assuming things will move over to XML, and everyone is going to use it. Let us not forget about the standings when it comes to creating a so called standard, shtml, WML, and all those other acronyms I care not to type.
Re:i know this is trolling, but... (Score:1)
Microsoft didn't come up with XML, they just adopted it.
Normally, I don't respond to ACs, but this was just too much.
Now, go back to smoking your astroturf.
Re:How about TeX (Score:1)
It would be a much better world if all wordporcessors supported:
TeX
html
rich text format(but not the bastardized, newer MS implementations of it)
and, of course: SGML
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:1)
Re:How about TeX (Score:2)
Re:I read this yesterday or two days ago. (Score:2)
said that they could not do a library, because they user C or C++ and different technologies
Why not just make a standalone app as a filter. It could accept word documents in, and output an XML formatted document and jpg images for images embedded in word. The XML doc could be an open standard, parseable by all open source word processors.
Re:Common Filter Output. (Score:1)
Re:Lock stock and 2 smoking barrels... (Score:3)
And in case you're wondering, none of us really understand DTD's or the finer points of XML. If XML did not exist I'd probably be asking for messages formatted like RFC822 headers (Key: Value) and we'd run into endless problems with newlines, CRLF etc.
For decades programmers have been making ad-hoc markup languages and writing cheesy parsers that work 98% of the time. XML, which has exactly five reserved entities, lets us save a lot of energy and use proven standardized parsers.
There is very little to know about XML and it's nowhere near as complex as a programming language. If you've made a web page, you've written something close to well-formed XML. The only difference being that in XML every element must be matched by a closing element or contain a trailing slash. So <P> would become <P/>
Re: Then We Need Meta-Tools/Techniques (Score:2)
Most commonly used to parse (unambiguous computer) languages, but a word file is alot less complicated then a language I can assure you :)
Re:Smart (Score:2)
Odds are against you. Corel sells WordPerfect for money; if AbiWord and the rest become viable contenders, who wants to spend the money for WordPerfect? It is arguably in Corel's best interest for all the free word processors to have lousy filters for as long as possible.
How are the WordPerfect filters? If they suck, then Corel could rationally join the filter crew, since good filters would then benefit Corel as much as anyone else. At least in that scenario there is some clear benefit to Corel.
Of course, if the decision is made by a stereotypical boss figure, Corel will mind its own fish and stay out. Why do something new and different? Could be risky. Continuing to do the same thing is always seen as safe.
steveha
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:2)
I like it. This nicely end-runs the problem of library compatability for C++/C/whatever. And under Linux, at least, firing up a new process is fast, and you only run the import filter when opening a new document, so there would be no issues with speed.
steveha
Re:Not to troll but... (Score:2)
Why should you need it? Word has always been able to read an RTF. So if you write a document, export in RTF and send it to a Word-addicted coworker, he should be able to import it into Word with no problems.
The problem is that then he will want to send you back the modified document. If he used full-power Word (e.g. using the change bars to hilight the changes), even if he is willing to convert the doc back in RTF, lots of fomatting info will be lost.
Re:I read this yesterday or two days ago. (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft unifying Open Source? (Score:2)
Which shows that there is a silver lining in black clouds, afterall.
Re:Word .doc format support is nice but... (Score:1)
Combining this with the above thread on XML
Re:How about TeX (Score:1)
Re:Common Filter Output. (Score:1)
Re:Smart (Score:2)
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:2)
Re:I thought Open Office had already this ? (Score:2)
That would be indeed a thread, as not even MS is able do open a .doc document perfectly (when using different versions of MSWord)
CHeers, Peter
Re:How about TeX? (Score:4)
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:1)
Well, abiword is also using XML to save data. Just open an abiword file, it's not even compressed!
Note: There is also a gzipped abiword format, I am not talking about that
The good are are coming back... (Score:1)
In the old days (windows days) every application semmed to be ablt to "talk to" and "incorperate with" each other.
Later I found the true way. There came Linux and after a painful 6 months I was able to do most of my job on the command line. The applications were still coorperating with each other. Oh, yes there was X, too with ugly but "coorperating" motif applications.
Then the dark side of the code emerged. We were all bound with project who do not like each other and all duplicating efforts. (see: KDE, GNOME and 80 million media players). I was unable to undestand all the *.desktop and *.nautilus horrors.
At last the sun starts to shine again. People start to realize that choices are good (vi/emacs/rhide) but code duplication (KDE/GNOME) and uncoorperation is not (*.desktop, *.nautilus).
I only wonder when the Moz/Konqi was will be over.
Not so open (OpenDWG) (Score:2)
XML vs SGML (Score:2)
Re:A good thing, too... (Score:3)
Microsoft unifying Open Source? (Score:2)
I wonder if the recent propaganda assault by Microsoft is drawing the open source/free software community closer? There have been a spate of these "new cooperation" stories lately. Perhaps differences in philosophy and direction start to seem pretty minor when Microsoft conspicuously brings its ion cannons to bear...
Re:jumping the gun (Score:1)
Re:A good thing, too... (Score:2)
What is needed, though, is documentation on the current MSOffice formats. (Reverse engineering for interoperability...) Probably using OpenOffice's formats would be better, but ymmv.
And you're right about not needing to be involved in the projects; all you need is a way of forcing them to use your intermediate language at gunpoint
/Brian
Re:Not to troll but... (Score:2)
Another point -- are we talking filtering one way or both? I'm thinking the cleanest way to go back is RTF export (which presumably already exists on all platforms) but where can you get an rtf->Word filter (probably to Word 97?)?
/Brian
Re:It's easy (Score:2)
If Microsoft had any interest at all in interoperability there'd be a
/brian
Re:Bad thing. (Score:2)
It's like being a Mac user or, I don't know, a non-American. Your average Mac can read a PC disk, but it doesn't usually go the other way. Meanwhile, your average USian speaks English and *maybe* Spanish, which means the rest of the world has to learn English to communicate with us. Good, bad, it's the reality -- it's great that Sun eats its own dogfood by using StarOffice internally, but file exchange is pretty important, and MSWord is the number one format to translate.
/brian
Re:Lock stock and 2 smoking barrels... (Score:2)
You are quite right about the Next Best Thing problem, of course. But somewhere in the alphabet soup someone does find something useful. Linux for example -- it was one of a decent-size handful of projects like it, but it had a few features that stuck out: GPL, open development model, etc. It worked. That's where the dotcom bubble came from too -- though many an investment manager can be faulted for losing all trace of common sense and throwing old economy rules out the window prematurely, the basic idea was sound (if hilariously sloppily implemented): if you have no seeds, throw water at dirt and see if anything edible will grow.
The things you mentioned... I still don't get the whole UML thing; it sounds like a bureaucratic construct of roughly the same nature as flowcharts (when was the last time you saw one of those in use?). HTML is a standard and it's not going to die out as long as the web is still in service. CSS... it's a seedling, if we follow the above metaphor. We don't know where it's going to lead (I'm a bit suspicious of it myself because I don't like complicated HTML formatting; some kind of server-side processing might be better). COOL/C#... another early-stage seed(ling?). Microsoft might yet cook up an open standard from it (though I wouldn't bet on it), but I don't think it's going to fully displace Java.
Lots of technologies do get thrown out there. I happen to think XML, while maybe not likely to become entrenched where it was intended, will still wind up being a very popular way of structuring data.
/Brian
Re:Lock stock and 2 smoking barrels... (Score:2)
Okay, I was a little naive the way I stated it, *but* it's also reasonable to say that Fortran performance is what it is because it's entrenched. If it isn't necessarily the right tool, that doesn't mean it can't become the right tool. As Fortran did.
/Brian
A good thing, too... (Score:4)
Come to think of it, this would make a great project; anyone know what would be needed to write msw2xml(1)? My perl skills are becoming a bit rusty...
/Brian
Re:jumping the gun (Score:4)
It's a question of where the nucleation sites develop -- WML is out there, but there's no call for it since the Wireless Web is a nonentity (at least in my social circles -- for all I know it might be vastly different in, say, Finland). And we've had browser implementors shoving extensions down our throat, but realistically... when was the last time you saw a tag?
So I think assuming XML is heading in the right direction. It won't show up everywhere it *should* (I remember someone on
(I do think XML is a bit skanky, btw, but it's like C -- it's there, it works, and it's a good starting point for future designs.)
/Brian
Re:How about TeX? (Score:1)
This needn't be true, though. Since you have the TeX source, you should be able to come up with an output method for TeX which will output to, say, an Abiword doc, and simply outputs the information for the document structure along with the text and so on, rather than generating, uh, whatever it generates. Is that PostScript? The same is true of Ghostscript and PostScript. I'm not saying it'd be trivial, or that I could do it, but it's certainly possible.
Also; Why do libraries? Unix gives us STDIN and STDOUT for a reason. Just make any filter an executable. If you're filtering a document, and not a stream, you don't lose anything by that methodology, and the added beneficial side effect is that you end up with executables which anyone can use in any project, from a shell script to C++ to Java...
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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
Re:More than just MS-Word. (Score:1)
Since my company is standardized on Word, we actually have a couple of secretaries whose sole duty is to convert WP to Word, and then correct all the mistakes from the conversion. WP can't import Word properly, and Word can't import WP worth the dead snail on my porch, so the whole company ends up pissed at both. (Rumor has it that we paid for one of our primary outside counsels to convert to Word because of the sheer volume of documentation involved.)
Re:More than just MS-Word. (Score:1)
This issue is why I look forward to XML as a single standard for saving documents.
WordPerfect? (Score:2)
What about WordPerfect's *.wpd format? Yes, I know -- WordPerfect is available for Linux, and for free. But a lightweight, open source word processor along the lines of AbiWord or kWord would be real nice if it supported wpd files.
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DOOR!!
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:1)
Of course they have a right to propose standards for everyone to use. The trouble is, what they call a "standard" is usually a moving target.
Every standard is a moving target. HTML, Unicode, TCP/IP, everything evolves.
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Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:2)
Well, if you exclude, ANSI, the ISO, and all the other public standards making bodies from "anyone", maybe.
Think about what you're saying. Do you really want to wait for ANSI or ISO to set a standard before any software can be written? Should WordPerfect have told ANSI that they were about to release a word processor in 1985 that had such and so features, and then let them get back to them on a standard format before they implemented those features?
Or Netscape -- people have criticized them for extending HTML, but how much longer would things have taken if they had waited for some committee to take years to set a standard, rather than going ahead and implemented https?
When it comes to technologies, particularly software technologies, it is often best for standards bodies to be reactive rather than proactive. A good example is Standard C, when the standards bodies formalized existing practice.
Microsoft is often criticized for "embrace and extend", but every company does it. Because you often have to extend a standard in order to implement new features that simply don't work within the existing framework. Again, see Netscape/HTML.
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Word .DOC filter and e-mail packages (Score:5)
Re:Word .doc format support is nice but... (Score:1)
It's easy (Score:1)
Word .doc format support is nice but... (Score:4)
I love AbiWord for reading MS Word documents and writing quick letters, etc. I think it's a great program, and it reads the Microsoft .doc format quite nicely. But one thing that all open source word processors have omitted, including Open Office, is WordPerfect document support! Sure, I can get WordPerfect for Linux [corel.com], but isn't the point of Open Source that you shouldn't need to be tied to a single proprietary piece of software? Isn't that what the freedom is all about?
For one reason or another, I can't get WordPerfect 8, the personal edition available for download, to install on my Linux box. Perhaps it doesn't like Mandrake 8, maybe it's my own ineptitude (I've been running Linux as my primary OS for about 4 months now), but it just won't cooperate. I wouldn't mind purchasing WP Office 2000 for Linux, but if I can't get WP8 to install, that tells me that WP2000 might suffer from the same problems. Given the average return policy of most software stores (i.e., no returns once it's open), I'm extremely hesitant to spend upwards of $100 on software that may or may not work on my machine. But I've been using Word Perfect for over 12 years now, and need WP file support. Right now, the only way I can get it is by booting my Windows partition and using WP2k for Windows.
So developers, if you're listening, Word support is great, but don't forget about those of us who haven't used Microsoft (at least for word processing) for a long time!
- Stealth Dave
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Word file formats? Hardly. (Score:3)
- WordPerfect, because that's the word processor I like, and it prints well for hard copies.
- html, because it's everywhere, and even M$ Word lusers can read it.
When I email my resume to someone, I attach the html version, and if the want ad specified a Word format, then I politely explain to them that I can't provide it as aOh, and I know someone it going to protest by saying that WordPerfect can save to .doc or .rtf, but it really destroys the formatting, which to me is half the battle of getting potential employers to actually do more than glance at a resume. If they see something with the indenting trashed and different font sizes from one page to the next, all they are going to do is toss the resume in the round file.
Re:It's easy (Score:1)
Re:How about having a unified format? (Score:2)
Re:How about TeX (Score:1)
How about TeX (Score:5)
* professional as in 'professional publisher', not as in 'professional marketeer'
Re: Then We Need Meta-Tools/Techniques (Score:3)
This collaboration is a good start, if they concentrate on not only coming up with filters, but discovering HOW to come up with a good filter.
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What about OpenWriter? (Score:1)
Lag? (Score:2)
Re:More than just MS-Word. (Score:2)
I didn't know Word sucked at importing WP so much. Luckily I've didn't have to import anything from WP to Word on my Mac when I bought it because the only .WPD files I had were stuff from when I was like 5 years old messing around on the 286. When ever I have to use a .DOC file on my parent's PC I just open the copy of Word that Conpaq was so nice to install for us...
--Volrath50
More than just MS-Word. (Score:4)
What KWord and that need are filters for other formats, paticularily WordPerfect 6-10. The thing about WordPerfect is that once you get WP6's format working you can open WP7, WP8, WP9 and WP10 because Corel never changes the format, unlike MS.
Without this my Dad can't switch to KWord or anything else (doubt he would want to though, he like WP8 too much) because he is an Auto Teacher and he has about 10 years worth of tests and stuff in WP format dating back to WP 5.1 on a 286 and DOS 5.1. (I remember that 286. Orange and black monitor. Those were the good old days. :-) And I know WP runs on Linux but everyone that I know hates WP for Linux.
While it would be possible to convert them all to RTF or something, he has hundreds and hundreds of files it won't be easy or fast.
What RedHat and others can to focus on is telling the Average Consumer that Windows XP is violating their privacy, among other things. Every few days I tell my dad about Windows XP's evil features (Such as Hardware ID stuff) and he considers switching to Macs or Linux more and more. But again the biggest thing keeping him back is lack of ANY WordPerfect format compatibility. (Minus WP it's self). The biggest thing keeping me form switching from my Mac and Word is lack of good consistant GUI.
I should stop rambling on and sum my post up: WordPerfect compatibility is important too!
--Volrath50
Common Filter Output. (Score:1)
A common format between open source Linux WPs would be a big bonus! And it would make writing a Word2LinuxWP filter much easier.
What is the difference between LaTeX and XML? Aren't both specialized subsets of SGML?
Does anyone have any links?
One thing I will give XML, you could specify your WP as conforming to a given DTD version then as people add more features to the DTD you can release a new version of the WP that has support for the DTD features. This would drive the market in a feature oriented way without breaking much. Plus if it's in XML you can verify the ducument is well formed even if you couldn't edit or display some advanced tag. Of course the ultimate is that your WP would be a big component manager and you could 'plugin' new document features when a new DTD is approved.
Final comment - Isn't WordPerfect based on customized version of TeX?
Re:How about TeX (Score:1)
Well, Its not that simple. (Score:1)
My guess is that like all dominanat entities, they will change when outward circumstances force them to do so (RE: economically feasable). They control > 90% of the desktop and office software so don't count on standards or cooperation. Notice, however, some time back that they were pushing Internet chat standards merely because they had not the marketshare AOL enjoys.
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
I agree, however over 90% of the market uses this format. Though not the best, it is the leader and we must recognize or fight that. We can't pretend it does not exist.
This is, of course, good. (Score:3)
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:1)
If you define "rich" as being a millionaire, you'd need twenty million .doc files that are not Word documents. That's not exatly a low number
Re:Word .doc format support is nice but... (Score:1)
Incedentally, WordPerfect Office 2000 works fine on my Mandrake 8 box and it's wonderful. WP8 is sufferent from some serious bitrot, and it relies on some really old libraries that haven't been shipped with any Linux distro I've used in the last 2 years.
StarOffice 5.1/5.2 will import WP documents, but they don't do any exporting, I'm afraid.
Re:Free Office suites already use XML (Score:1)
If I had a nickle for every .doc file I have seen that wasn't a Word document, I'd be rich.
A preamble embedded in the file is a better way to go and even better is to use some sort of universally recognized structure like XML or TLV. Either way, file browsers can read the first few bytes of the file and find out what it really is, instead of trying to guess based on the extension.
As far as compressed files are concerned, 'file' already has a '-z' flag to make it look inside compressed files. This should be expanded to to include gzip'd files etc.
By the way, Microsoft is moving towards embedding information with their CLI Metadata.
microsoft likes their monopoly (Score:1)