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@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stewart Bryant Sent: 08 April 2005 10:47 To: Brian E Carpenter Cc: ned.freed@xxxxxxxxxxx; Bruce Lilly; Alex Rousskov; ietf@xxxxxxxx; 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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