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Re: Common Word Processing Format

• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Subject: Re: Common Word Processing Format
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:15:26 -0800
• Cc: "'Uche Ogbuji'" <Uche.Ogbuji@f...>, "Nathan Young -X (natyoung - Artizen at Cisco)" <natyoung@c...>, Robert Koberg <rob@k...>, Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0BB1FC44@h...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0BB1FC44@h...>
• Sender: Tim.Bray@S...

On Dec 2, 2005, at 6:34 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:

> Which is fine for someone who can do all of that and doesn't mind.
> Other shops do mind.  Good of the many pertains here.  Good of the
> one is not compromised.
>
> 1.  This thread is centered around the Commonwealth of Massachusetts'
> policy to pick a specification to be their standard word processing
> format.  This isn't about what one guy does in his own shop.  Think
> scale and cost.

And thus it misses a key point.  When it comes to Office Document  
formats, we're really talking about the WP/spreadsheet/presentation  
trio.  Of these three, an increasing proportion of text documents are  
migrating to various forms of HTML, whether this is a good idea or  
not, and the most important office-software component is clearly the  
spreadsheet.  While XHTML is increasingly plausible as a presentation  
package (see S5), and maybe as a text-doc format, nobody is proposing  
it for spreadsheets.  So in the Massachusetts context, XHTML is a red  
herring.

Having said that, I am coming increasingly to the view that if you  
had an editor with a decent GUI, and (crucially) a good change- 
tracking facility, XHTML could plausibly expand to fill pretty well  
all of the workaday-text-document ecosystem.  The Kool Kids want to  
tunnel all sorts of value-adds through here and there and call this  
"Microformats"; I used to sneer at this until I accidentally invented  
a resumé microformat (http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/ 
2005/11/12/Resume-Blues).

Having said that, the jury's way out on virtually everything in the  
text-document space.  But I bet that in the year 2389, the Galactic  
Federation will still be doing its budgets in something that is  
recognizably a spreadsheet.  -Tim

• References:
  • RE: Common Word Processing Format
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>

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