On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 10:55 -0500, Robert Koberg wrote:
> Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 11:00 -0800, Nathan Young -X (natyoung - Artizen
> > at Cisco) wrote:
> > 
> >>If we're talking about a document format to replace MS word documents,
> >>we need much more than XHTML.  XHTML holds the content of the document
> >>and provides (some) semantic information about that content.  To
> >>replicate what a word doc can do and does do for most users, you have to
> >>also specify how it's going to display and probably provide some
> >>information to the application about how the editing experience should
> >>be presented.
> > 
> > 
> > I don't know why I'm even bothering with such a hopelessly subjective
> > debate, but since everyone here seems to be so eager to crown XHTML for
> > office formats, I'll pip up and say say:
> > 
> > Thank GODDESS for the OO XML project, Microsoft's partially reformed
> > Office XML format team, and all others who are saving us from the abject
> > horror of having to contemplate XHTML as an office file format.
> > 
> > Are you kidding me?
> > 
> > All arguments for XHTML everywhere eventually boil down to arguments
> > that rather than 
> > 
> > <monty>
> >   <python/>
> > </monty>
> 
> no. you are missing the point. No one is stopping you from using 
> whatever you want internally for your self, your department, your 
> company or between companies if you want. But, if you want to let 
> someone who is not necessarily in the loop see it, put it in a format 
> that makes the most sense. I cannot see how that is MS Office or Open 
> Office. Even worse is having a state impose it upon its citizens.

> Say you are in charge of your states IT budget, how do you present
your 
> structure above to your citizens/vendors/buearocrats? Do you present 
> your structure above as an MSOffice or OOWrite document?

Len Bullard had a similar reply, but as I read the thread, the
discussion had broadened from the needs of one state to Office Format
best practice in general.  If you still meant the discussion in narrow
context, I don't think that was clear, and thus my reaction.  I
certainly don't deign to tell MA how to write technology policy.  I
haven't analyzed their problem domain.


> > I should write:
> > 
> > <div class="monty">
> >   <span class="python"/>
> > </div class"monty">
> > 
> > No bloody thank you.  Freedom from naming-by-committee is what drew me
> > to XML in the first place.  I am not about to chuck that freedom for the
> > very false comfort of a protean generic identifier.
> 
> have you /looked/ at the XML source for either of the office suites? 

I was on the OO XML OASIS WG for a few moths at the beginning, and the
final product is not radically different from what we started with.  I
have not really seen much of the new Office XML.


> Given that you can't do what you want in OOWrite and only painfully and 
> with a bad UI in MSWord, why are you celebrating those formats?

Can't do what I want?  I don't follow.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net                    http://fourthought.com
http://copia.ogbuji.net                   http://4Suite.org
Articles: http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/publications/