From miles.ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk Mon May 22 17:23:55 2000 Received: from oxmail.ox.ac.uk (oxmail1.ox.ac.uk [129.67.1.1]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id RAA60052 for ; Mon, 22 May 2000 17:23:53 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from miles.ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk) Received: from ermine.ox.ac.uk ([163.1.2.13]) by oxmail.ox.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #3) id 12tu3T-0003a7-00 for sc22wg5@dkuug.dk; Mon, 22 May 2000 16:23:43 +0100 Received: from com1.etrc.ox.ac.uk ([163.1.85.1]) by ermine.ox.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1) id 12tu3T-0007eJ-00 for sc22wg5@dkuug.dk; Mon, 22 May 2000 16:23:43 +0100 User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 16:24:10 +0100 Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.1795) Use of Word to distribute documents From: Miles Ellis To: "WG5 members (list)" Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <200005221437.QAA59819@dkuug.dk> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On 22/5/00 3:37 pm John Reid said: > Word is currently used to distribute some SC22 documents and I am > objecting. Here is a short paper for the meeting in Japan in September. > Does anyone have any comments? > > John. > > .......................... > > > Proposal: That SC22 cease to use Word for document distribution > > John Reid, WG5 Convenor > > Word is not a standard and is unsafe (it provides a mechanism for > the import of viruses). It is not readily available to those running > systems other than Microsoft's. Marisa Peacock reports that she can > easily circulate documents in HTML or PDF instead. > I complained about Word being used to distribute documents several years ago for exactly the same reasons that John cites. When Bill Rinehuls was the Secretariat for SC22 he used to distribute documents in text form wherever possible, and used pdf on most other occasions. Since pdf is an acceptable format in which to submit standards, etc, to ISO for publication, unlike PostScript, this always seemed a sensible approach. Most people can read standard HTML - whatever that is - and it is unlikely that any standards documents would contain Explorer or Netscape proprietary extensions which would cause problems for some people. So HTML is probably OK for simpler documents. However, pdf is preferable, IMHO, for draft standards, etc, simply because it is acceptable for the final document and HTML is not. Miles -------------- Dr Miles Ellis Director: Educational Technology Resources Centre University of Oxford, 37 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JF, ENGLAND Telephone: +44 1865 270528 Fax: +44 1865 270527 Email: Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk miles@oph.u-net.com (home) WWW: http://www.etrc.ox.ac.uk/information/staff/Miles/Miles_Ellis.html