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

["Danilo Gonzalez Hashimoto" <dgh.sushi@uol.com.br>]

Thanks Nels. Really enlightening coments.

	Sure it has some concerns. I don't know about any cross-platform easy of use WYSIWYG LaTEX editor(do you?). Besides, I don't know how easy is it to edit our .PDF files, to put it into the proceedings, in a standard way. 
	It's all about Simple End User Linux, at all.
	Anyway, it will be a good solution, as soon as we are using linux on every machine here in the lab, with LyX.
	The CD could have a .HTML index of the papers, or a flash presentation, etc. I will work on it to the next congress.

	In addition, I've received support from my chiefs to write a brief letter about adoption of open/variate document formats, wich they will be supporting in the Congress and other events. (kinda "Why using PS/PDF/SDW also?" or "Why not just .DOC?").
	Any ideas of key concepts/explanation this document should have?

regards,

Danilo

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 16/05/00 at 11:25 Tomlinson, Nels wrote:

>I am a graduate student here at Purdue.  I am fortunate enough to be able to
>choose to refuse to deal with people who demand an unfortunate format, such
>as .doc.  I usually share files as a postscript version, which they can read
>with ghostview (freely available over the web), and the latex source which
>generated it.  They can edit the Latex source if they want, and send it back
>to me to re-compile.  The postscript lets them see how much prettier my way
>is.  
>
>My introduction to postscript was converting a bunch of postscript files
>into PDF, to be included in a set of conference procedings, to be
>distributed on CD at the conference.  This seems a sensible idea. PDF is
>more compact than postscript, looks MUCH better than Word, and they can
>include Adobe Acrobat on the CD.  Many folks can't read word documents
>today, and in 10 years, almost no-one will be able to read them.  Microsoft
>will have changed the format half-a-dozen times by then.  
>
>It is very cheap to make CD's now.  Perhaps you could put your stuff on your
>own CD, using PDF and including acrobat, and distribute it to the folks at
>the conference? I'm guessing that it would cost under a US dollar per CD,
>here.  It might be a very effective protest against that .doc-only policy,
>especially when the people see how much better your papers look than do
>theirs.  If it's a large conference and you have a small budget, just a few
>dozens of CD's to the right people could make a big impression.
>
>Good luck, in any event.
>Nels
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Danilo Gonzalez Hashimoto
>To: seul-sci@seul.org
>Sent: 5/15/00 8:00 PM
>Subject: Re: [seul-sci] For comments: .DOC
>
>Hello Ross
>
>	Well, RTF has a little problem: size. RTF files are WAY much
>larger than DOC files. Compacting it would make it fit in a good size,
>but they(the congress) don't like it.
>	Anyway, it's not the point: 
>	The very point is that there is people/institutions wich
>*demand* proprietary formats. This is not good for many many reasons.
>(Retrieving old docs is may be a nightmare, if you don't have the app
>anymore; no conversor will ever be 100% confiable; etc.).
>	What to do/to tell other people to do? Publish it in HTML? PDF?
>Plain-text? Some formats are hardly edited. Others require images to be
>linked. Even others have poor formulae support.
>	Even LaTEX has problems: Neither StarOffice nor MSOffice has a
>LaTEX conversor. (Personally I have no experience with LaTEX. Correct me
>if I am wrong)
>	Some people accept LaTEX, others do not. What do people do in
>order to exchange documents in a proper manner? 
>
>
>regards,
>
>	Danilo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
>
>On 12/05/00 at 16:06 Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:
>
>>On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 04:32:35PM -0300, Danilo Gonzalez Hashimoto
>wrote:
>>> Hello people!
>>> 
>>> 	We've had a thread on some aspects of using Linux in a
>production environment some weeks ago. This time I have a new problem:
>File interchange. 
>>> 	Next week, we're going to have a National Ceramics Congress here
>in Brazil. Perhaps some of you have guessed my problem. Papers in Word
>format only. Once we have started the change to Linux using StarOffice -
>wich runs on both platforms - we have a problem.
>>> 	StarOffice writes Word documents, but it does not necessarily
>means it does it well. Some quite strange things happen to some
>documents. 
>>> 	My question is: Do you also have this problem? Which are your
>workarounds? How can we solve it?
>>
>>One trick is to dump to RTF rather than Word format per se, then rename
>>the file from foo.rtf to foo.doc. Word will read it and convert on the
>>fly. RTF is a bit simpler (and actually sort of documented) so you
>might
>>preserve your original formating better, depending onthe quality of the
>>StarOffice export filter.
>>
>
>
>DANILO GONZALEZ HASHIMOTO
> 
>Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos
>Bacharelado em Ciencia da Computacao