Re: [sca-bindings] ODF or Word format for the OASIS Specs??

[Eric Johnson <eric@tibco.com>]

Hi Simon,

Simon Nash wrote:
> Eric Johnson wrote:
>> I've run into at least one problem where round-trips between ODF and DOC
>> don't quite work with our documents.  (Line numbers are just one
>> example.)  I'd want to test more before assuming that we can use
>> both. If you don't update the table of contents properly before
>> converting to
>> ODF, OpenOffice might mangle the links.
>>
>> Tests I've been doing just now show that once saved as an ODT file,
>> OpenOffice doesn't show line numbers automatically upon reopening, even
>> though the option is turned on.  Could be that this is a bug in OO 3.0.0
>> which is fixed in 3.0.1 - I'd need to test.
>>
> We had an example of this kind of problem on today's Bindings call
> where section numbers were different in OO and Word.
>
> I suspect that having some people view a document in OO with others
> viewing it in Word is going to cause some problems.  So I was
> suggesting that people could use whichever format they prefer for
> authoring, but people viewing it would use the same software as
> the author used.
Keeping in mind that I'm the die-hard Linux user in the bunch, and I'm
recommending some caution in switching, just based on little items here
and there.
>
>> Even though I'd be happier if we switched, I do recommend some
>> caution here.
>>
>> OO does a *much* better job of generating PDFs.
>>
> I'm intrigued by this.  I never had any problems doing this with
> Word+Acrobat.
It could be this is just the default configuration.  Whatever the
editors for the SCA specifications are doing, I'm not too enthused.

By *default* OpenOffice is generating a PDF table of contents (shows up
on the left as clickable links), and all intra-document references are
actually clickable.  All the external references end up clickable too. 
If I take the .DOC file that gets published, open in in OpenOffice, and
export as PDF, I get a much easier-to-use PDF document than what I'm
seeing now.  Unfortunately, it doesn't end up being quite the same PDF
when I do it, as say, when Anish or Simon does it.

I'd be satisfied if Word+Acrobat could mimic this, and the editors were
doing what it takes to get the slightly nicer output.
>
> Is this the solution to the problem... everybody posts PDFs?
We need an editable format posted, though.

We did discuss this early on, and at least informally agreed that we'd
stick to Word.  As the one who suffers most from that decision, I'm
still OK with it.  I think the only reason it came up again was that the
compare functionality in MS Word turns out to be awful - based on what
Anish reports - and it worked in OpenOffice. Those comparison PDFs are a
one-way problem - we don't need an editable form, so why not continue
doing what we're doing?

-Eric.