On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Grant Edwards <gra...@visi.com> wrote: > On 2009-01-27, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Tuesday 27 January 2009 06:29:55 Grant Edwards wrote: >>> On 2009-01-26, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> > These are shared documents. I can't just change what they are >>> > based on my own preferences. >>> > >>> > I need an app that WRITES .docx. If Office 2007 is the only >>> > one that does it, so be it. But a workaround or another way to >>> > skin this cat is not what I need here. >>> >>> In my experience, finding an app that writes .docx isn't going >>> to be good enough if the documents are shared. If you're >>> exporting or importing something just one time, you can get >>> usually away with it after some minor fixing afterwards. >>> >>> But if it's a shared document and needs to be edited multiple >>> times by multiple people, you just can't get away with using >>> two different apps -- hell, not even two different versions of >>> MSWord. If you go back and forth many times, the document will >>> steadily "deteriorate" with each transition from one app to >>> another. At least that's my experience. >> >> That's pretty much the conclusion I came to as well. Thanks >> for sharing though :-) > > I realize I'm arguing a moot point, but using something like > .docx for shared documents that need to be maintained by > multiple people for a long time (more than a month or two) is a > dead awful choice. > > A plain ascii text file is probably the best choice for > portability and longevity. However, that suggestion's probably > not going to fly because it severly limits the amount of time > you can waste picking out eye-shatteringly ugly font > combinations and f*&king up margins, gutters, leading, and all > the other things people like to mess up rather than doing real > work. > > My next choice would probably be something like RTF. If you > get into a jam it's mostly-human-readible. If you limit > yourself to simple formatting features it's about as portable > and robust as anything you can find that allows the inclusion > of graphics. The support for vector graphics (e.g. SVG) is > pretty slim, but bit-mapped graphics support works pretty well. > > HTML would seem to be a good choice as well, but even more than > RTF you've got to limit what features you use. The only way to > keep the file from deteriorating into a mess is to avoid any of > "WYSIWYG" HTML editors.
Google Apps is great for sharing documents.. You can even have multiple people editing in real-time and see each other's work. It's kind of fun, and all you need is a web browser. Again, irrelevant to the OP since he can't change his company's policy... but good to keep in mind for anyone who can :) Paul
