On 1/2/2011 4:31 AM, Bob W wrote:
BTW: What value is there in ".docx" files vs .doc files? or even vs
.rtf files? I've never seen one. I'd be curious to know. Pages '09
reads .DOCX files too, how they differ from .DOC files and what
advantage they pose seems invisible.
To the non-technical end user it doesn't really matter other than that .doc
is the most proprietary of the formats. The others are an attempt to open up
document formats to make them easier to share.
docx is an xml format whereas the others are (I think) binary. xml is a
notation used for structuring texts. Doc is proprietary to MS, as indeed is
docx, but it's open and the dtd (a machine-readable technical document that
describes types of xml text) is published somewhere so that xml processors
should theoretically be able to deal with it and published changes
relatively easily. xml itself is a mess, but that's a different story.
rtf is not proprietary. For the type of word processing that I do - keeping
things simple based on long-standing document design principles and avoiding
all the crap - it's perfectly adequate.
B
Actually RTF is propriatory. It's a Microsoft standard and you won't
find it described anywhere official except in Microsoft's RTF
documentation, of which there is only one publicly released document,
currently on version 1.6 all previous versions having been withdrawn,
probably because they were too easy to read.. Microsoft can change RTF
at anytime and not bother to notify anyone. It is essentially an
uncompilable DOC file. It's major advantage is that it's Human readable
though it's not nearly as structured as HTML, and by human readable I
mean just barely. You can hand code RTF documents that while following
all the rules of RTF such as they are, will crash pretty much every RTF
reader including Word, with nary an error message. The definitive RTF
reference that's not Microsoft is the O'Reily Pocket Guide. It is AFAIK
the only published discrimination of the language other than Microsoft's
RTF Specification.
--
Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!
--Marvin the Martian.
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