Re: [Fsfe-uk] Health Service departments unable to read AbiWord attachments

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 22:42, Matt Lee wrote:
> > If so, is it one which is in fact supported by free software like OO?   
> > A
> > lot of places say they want MSWord, for example, but I can give them  
> > the
> > OO exported version and it works fine.
> 
> That's what I'd do, or even RTF or PDF. PDF is always good.
> 
> Here's an example of AbiWord document.
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <!DOCTYPE abiword PUBLIC "-//ABISOURCE//DTD AWML 1.0 Strict//EN"  
> "http://www.abisource.com/awml.dtd";>
> <abiword template="false" styles="unlocked"  

> <metadata>
> <m key="dc.format">application/x-abiword</m>
> <m key="abiword.generator">AbiWord</m>
> <m key="abiword.date_last_changed">Thu Feb 24 15:33:32 2005</m>
> </metadata
> 
> So, that's XML, but it's not even a standard like the OASIS file  
> formats that OO.o uses.

If there is to be any standard data format that will displace .doc for
E-mail attachments it will be the Open Document Format of OASIS and OOo.
In principle, the more FLOSS apps that adopt it and support it the more
likley it will become accepted. If AbiWord maintains its own format its
very unlikely that anyone other than Abiword users will know or care
what it is. We need to put energy into battles we can win.

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd