Subject: Re: Word Exporter Project
From: Birger Langkjer (birger.langkjer@image.dk)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 20:42:30 CST
Den tor, 02 mar 2000 21:45:17 skrev Justin Bradford:
..
> Regardless of the availability of the binary file format, I think it's a
> good idea to work on this "XML" exporter. For one, Sam could probably have
> a nice Word "XML" exporter (and importer for that matter) in a shorter
> time than it would take to begin to understand the binary format.
>
> And, theoretically, this could become an important format. And, at very
> least it's another check in the features/compatiblity column...
I know one project (www.ccel.org) that plans to use this Word 2000
format for their etexts. The proofreader edits an rtf file in Word,
saves it in MSxml, sends the file to ccel, and they use a script to
convert it to their own XML-like format. If you gave AbiWord the same
functionality there would probably be atleast 3-4 people in the world
whose lifes would be made easier ;-) One of them is me, so my advice is:
"Go ahead, by all means!" :-)
I don't think it's going to do any damage, after all the *ultimate* goal
must be to support all other fileformats, it's only the order that isn't
ideal but everything can't be perfect. If you write an importer as well,
there's no problem at all. Besides if this format is so easy to write
converters for, every other wordprocessor will support it soon anyway,
thus making it a de facto standard for document exchange.
-- Med venlig hilsen/Best regards/Amicalement Birger Langkjer http://members.xoom.com/langkjer
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