Elwyn,
As one of those who still use M$Word when writing drafts, I can also
confirm the generic text driver problems. Actually, I have had to
patch the draft parser for each new Windows version. However, after
doing that, I am still fine with using Word for drafts, as I like
WYSIWYG, and have no problems with making sure myself what I have
actually put in the draft (when it comes to mandatory sections, etc).
In most cases when you ask people what tools they prefer, they will
answer that they prefer to use the one(s) they have been using before
and are familiar with. So some people prefer to use nroff, others
use XML, others MS Word, etc.
Thanks to the IETF principle of having txt being the official format,
people have the opportunity to use whatever tool they like when they
write drafts. That is excellent, and I hope we can keep that principle.
Cheers,
/L-E
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org]On Behalf Of
Elwyn davies
Sent: den 8 april 2005 12:32
To: 'Stewart Bryant'; 'Brian E Carpenter'
Cc: 'Alex Rousskov'; 'Bruce Lilly'; ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; 'IETF TOOLS discussion'
Subject: RE: Last Call: 'Requirements for IETF Draft
Submission Toolset'
toInformational RFC
FYI I am an ex-Word user, now fully converted to xml2rfc.
I thought Word was a convenient way to conform to Draft style
and handle
revision control but was frustrated by the toolchain. The
main problem I
found was the badly broken 'Generic Text Printer' driver which has not
worked properly for a number of versions of Word in my
experience. Symptoms
include:
- unilaterally changing the paragraph width so that it
outputs one character
on each line starting from some random point in the document
- unilaterally changing the fount height to a microscopic
value so that text
is converted to a horizontal line in random paragraphs
Microsoft are in denial about these bugs. Presumably there
is not much call
for the Generic Text Printer. (I must admit I haven't
bothered to try it in
my most recent version of Word, but I wouldn't hold my breath).
I am aware of other possible ways to get the ASCII output but
they are all
just as flaky and tedious.
I'll live with the need for balanced tags (I am pretty adept
at detecting
what has gone wrong by now) and some other minor irritations
for the sake of
knowing that I won't end up fighting the tools when trying to
get a draft
out close to the deadlines (when of course the random bugs noted above
always strike!)
I know several other authors who have defected for similar reasons.
Regards,
Elwyn
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org]
On Behalf Of
Stewart Bryant
Sent: 08 April 2005 10:47
To: Brian E Carpenter
Cc: ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com; Bruce Lilly; Alex Rousskov;
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org; IETF
TOOLS discussion
Subject: Re: Last Call: 'Requirements for IETF Draft
Submission Toolset'
to Informational RFC
I would also be interesting to know how many use Microsoft Word
to produce drafts.
Stewart
Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Regardless of the interesting side-discussion about 'voting',
what the toy shows after about a day is:
prefer nroff: 8
prefer xml: 37
neither: 9
which implies a few hundred abstentions, of course.
Brian
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