Re: [seul-sci] For comments: .DOC

["Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@wallace.ece.rice.edu>]

On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 08:26:02AM +0000, xcalbet@inm.es wrote:
> 
>   The MS Word format is THE LAST real barrier for Linux to enter the
> desktop. This problem will probably never be solved since MS will always
> keep on changing the specs of their formats so the others have to play
> catch up. The only real solution is to change over to another non MS
> format, but this does not seem feasible now.
> 
>   Currently there is no other format as "good" and extended as MS Word
> format to substitute it. Here is a brief overview of what I think
> 
<snip>

One you don't mention, or do so only in a tangental fashion: SGML in
general, and DocBook in particular. It's as general (or _more_ general)
than Word, and has he advantage of being a standard format, independent
of any particular app. LyX used to have a DocBook mode, in fact (I think
it hasn't been kept current with the latest DicBook spec., but I could
be wrong)

There's even a move to write an XML version of the DocBook DTD, so the
buzz for all things XML may help us wean people away from proprietary
formats. In fact, a good, general structured text editor that can read
and edit arbitrary XML documents given their DTD is the next killer app.,
in my opinion. Someone know of one?

Ross
-- 
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu> 
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St.,  Houston, TX 77005