RE: HTML And/Or PDF? - Reply

["Craig Ede" <craig.ede@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan,

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment on all aspects you addressed
regarding this particular topic. However, since the benefits will only
become clear when the flow of XML structured data can go both ways, the
use of XML will be a bit slow growing at first.

I hope that Adobe fully implements round-tripping XML capability for
FrameMaker. If Microsoft implements XML roundtripping in Word this would
make handling Word docs with FrameMaker much simpler than the current
nightmare of having to deal with importing them via version-specific
filters. Words native file format has changed so many times that it is
impossible to have filters that are reliable. 

I don't expect Microsoft implement XML in their products without putting
some stumbling block(s) into the process because it can only weaken
their grip on the marketplace. They can't afford to ignore XML however
because the benefits will become very clear in a very short time if all
the other vendors are working to meaningfully implement it.

Craig

>>> Dan Emory <danemory@primenet.com> 05/20 5:15 pm >>>
At 12:13 PM 5/20/99 -0700, Snavely, Deborah wrote:
>Dan said:
>> Re: HTML  And/Or   PDF?
><snip>
===============================================================
>Theoretically, it looks fascinating and has a huge potential. 
>Practically, the path from here to there is completely fogged in!
===============================================================
Far less foggy than existing methods of moving  conventionally prepared
docs
in and out of a database, or converting them from one DTP format to
another,
or moving them between different platforms, or reliably converting them
to/from HTML, or translating them into different languages. These are
problems that will continue to plague the publishing and tech writing
industries until some universal format (such as XML) is used for
information
exchange between people, software applications, databases, and
platforms.
==================================================================


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