Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Content Format

[Bob Dodd]

--- Imran Ghory <address@hidden> wrote:
[snip]
> But nearly the entire field of mathematics uses Latex, almost every 
> maths software package supports Latex.

Fine, no problem, use Latex. But you need also to accept maths
formatted in other formats (e.g. MathML) too, that's all. I'm not
anti-Latex (or XML fro that matter) at all, I just don't want to force
people to use it.
 
> > It strikes me that well known, well supported formats should be
> > accepted. There is after all, no difference between a well known,
> well
> > supported proprietory format, and one developed by FSF
> 
> Have you seen the Word file format, grab the Word 6 spec from,
> 
> http://fileformat.virtualave.net/text/word6fmt.zip
> 
> If you want to write a converter to XML we'll all be happy:-)
> 
> Imran Ghory

I went looking at your link and got diverted off to:
http://www.wvware.com/  which I found fascinating...

GPL software to automatically convert Word (in all its flavors as far
as I could tell) into Latex, HTML4, PDF, postscript... :-) I don't know
know many of these converters really work properly, but it does
strengthen my argument:

People should be able to submit the content (not the header info
necessarily) in any well-known, well supported content format. If
particluar catalogs/filters prefer certain file formats for
presentation, then they can always apply the appropriate filter before
presentation (e.g. Word6 to Latex). And if we really want we can apply
filters to the back-end during submission, so that, as a minimum, have
all submissions available in a defined set of formats.  I would argue
that you *must* preserve the original submission though: the author
(and others) may need to update the submission.

/Bob Dodd





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