Editable text documents

[SlowRyde]

When providing a text document that users can modify to their own needs,
what is the best cross-compatable format to use, ie - txt, doc, rtf, etc.?

(Example: Click here for a sample donation letter)

Thanks,
Robert

 

[Michael Wilcox]

When providing a text document that users can modify to their own needs,
what is the best cross-compatable format to use, ie - txt, doc, rtf, etc.?

Sounds like you'd want RTF. I wouldn't provide DOC since I don't like
MS, but you could include that as well. Please have other options
besides DOC, though.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

When providing a text document that users can modify to their own needs,
what is the best cross-compatable format to use, ie - txt, doc, rtf, etc.?

Use HTML, but serve it up with a ".doc" extension and an
"application/octet-stream" MIME type.

 

[SpaceGirl]

etc.?

Sounds like you'd want RTF. I wouldn't provide DOC since I don't like
MS, but you could include that as well. Please have other options
besides DOC, though.

Well .DOC is actually an XML document... so it's much more suited for online
(even if it's as bloated as a... well, something really bloated).

 

[David Dorward]

Well .DOC is actually an XML document... so it's much more suited for
online

XML != Automatically suited for use online

While it might be easy to parse an XML file, it doesn't do much good if the
meaning of the elements is poorly defined.

Nor is it so great when binary data is mixed into it (as I have heard Word
does).

Also, only the latest version of .doc uses XML for its data storage.

 

[SpaceGirl]

XML != Automatically suited for use online

While it might be easy to parse an XML file, it doesn't do much good if the
meaning of the elements is poorly defined.

Nor is it so great when binary data is mixed into it (as I have heard Word
does).

Also, only the latest version of .doc uses XML for its data storage.

I meant purely from a conversion point of view... You can choose "file >
save as..." XML under Office XP. Office 2003 natively saves in a weird MS
XML hybrid, but again you can tell it to save in a more pure format, or MS
HTML (with about a billion stupid styles and proprietry mark-up...
grrrrrrrrrrr) or 'plain' HTML.

 

[Xavier Perseguers]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

| I meant purely from a conversion point of view... You can choose "file >
| save as..." XML under Office XP. Office 2003 natively saves in a weird MS
| XML hybrid, but again you can tell it to save in a more pure format, or MS
| HTML (with about a billion stupid styles and proprietry mark-up...
| grrrrrrrrrrr) or 'plain' HTML.

That's why tools like Dreamweaver provide a really useful command
"clean-up Word html" that is nice when receiving awful pages from
others. But, between us, it's much better to rewrite it all :-D

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFAgZknUUVNnsbn6BERAtLGAJ9w9dsCuDG9rYmtx46Q6jD0xD5fjACeLZOa
5N7ztoqkyLE6SkbJzJB+D2A=
=NntU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[David Christopher Weichert]

Am Sat, 17 Apr 2004 08:39:24 -0500 schrieb SlowRyde:

When providing a text document that users can modify to their own needs,
what is the best cross-compatable format to use, ie - txt, doc, rtf,
etc.?

(Example: Click here for a sample donation letter)

Thanks,
Robert

Depends on who your users are and what they want to / shall do with your
document. I can read all the aforementioned formats on my computer.
Complex files created with M$ Word might look different in OpenOffice, but
as long as I can get the content and really want it, I will find a way to
convert the stuff to plain text or something. But I would have to be
really keen on the info to go through such hassle.

If I shall reuse the information my prefered source format would be XML
(best if you'd use a dtd/schema I already use and have xslt stylesheets
for), my second choice would be plain text (using an ISO standard encoding
or Unicode).

regards
David