Elwyn davies wrote:
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.
I have never hit that bug. I might have a different view if I had.
What is useful is the ability for authors to imbed comments to each other
and track changes inline etc as the version develops. I have never tried
the xml tool chain but I assume that it does not have that feature?
That said, as a person that thinks in diagrams and not in text, I would
take any tool chain, regardless of cost or convenience, if the end
result was that normative IETF text had "proper" drawings just like
IEEE and ITU.
Stewart
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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