MS Word flame war (was: Re: RFC archival format)
2009-07-08 00:20:30
Douglas Otis <dotis at mail dash abuse dot org> wrote:
The concern is about the application accepting document instructions
and text and then generating document output. When this application
is proprietary, it is prone to change where remedies might become
expensive or impossible.
The implication is that open-source software is inherently stable and
commercial software is inherently unstable. That's hardly a safe
across-the-board assumption.
The evolution in hardware tends to force the use of different
operating systems which may no longer support older applications.
"Tends to," "may." Sounds like FUD to me. I haven't had any trouble
using Word 2003 under XP to read documents I created in Word 95 thirteen
years ago.
IIRC, I did work back in the early 90's that contained Russian written
using Word 5. Conversion proved difficult since proprietary fonts
were needed. Document recovery then required a fair amount of work to
rediscover the structure and character mapping. Trying to get any
version of Word to generate plain text outputs consistently always
seemed to be a PITA, that varied from version to version, and never
seemed worth the effort.
All work involving Cyrillic text was hit-and-miss fifteen years ago.
Every word processor or other application had its own custom format.
Many used KOI8-R, some used CP866 (or worse, CP855), a few used ISO
8859-5. PDF files depended entirely on the embedded font to convey
meaning; copy-and-paste from PDF was useless. Compatibility problems in
the era before widespread Unicode adoption were hardly limited to Word.
When people are required to input Word Document "instructions" into
their Word application, they might become exposed to system security
issues as well.
"Might be." More FUD over security. Has anyone suggested *requiring*
users to employ mail-merge-type macros as part of I-D preparation, or is
this just a general flame against Word?
The variability of the Word data structures makes identifying security
threats fairly difficult, where many "missing" features seem to be an
intended imposition as a means to necessitate use of the vendor's
macro language.
Translation: I don't like Microsoft.
Inherent security issues alone should disqualify use of proprietary
applications.
Hey, maybe if I say the word "security" enough times, people will get
scared and not use Word any more!
It would be sending the wrong message to mandate the use of
proprietary operating systems or applications in order to participate
in IETF efforts.
Who ever proposed to *mandate* the use of Windows or Word to write an
I-D or otherwise participate in IETF efforts? The proposal was to ALLOW
users to prepare I-Ds using Word, and translate the output of Word into
a format the IETF tools and RFC Editor can deal with. Nobody ever said
anything about *mandating* any of these tools.
After all, lax security often found within proprietary operating
systems and applications threatens the Internet.
Pure and complete FUD, despite the real macro threats of a few years
back. The Internet will not fall apart if someone uses Word, feeds the
output into a Word2RFC tool, and submits that output to IETF.
Open source includes more than just Linux, and the exposure of
requiring proprietary applications or operating systems would affect
nearly all IETF participants that maintain existing documents or
generating new ones.
Nobody, but nobody, has proposed requiring Word or Windows for IETF use.
--
Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages ˆ
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- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Doug Ewell
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Byung-Hee HWANG
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Doug Ewell
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Douglas Otis
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Julian Reschke
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Iljitsch van Beijnum
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Doug Ewell
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Doug Otis
- Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required, Julian Reschke
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