Re: [Groff] conversion to DOC format

[Larry Kollar]

Keith MARSHALL wrote:

> On 05-Aug-04 Ted Harding wrote:
> > Namely, I took a pukka HTML file ("wholefaq.html"), renamed it as
> > "wholefaq.doc", copied it to my MSWin virtual machine, and double
> > clicked on it as Larry describes.
> >
> > The result was the display, in Weird, of the raw HTML code plain-text
> > fashion, in Courier.
>
> I was intrigued by this too, and tried it with a copy of "intro.html"
> (from Peter Schaffter's "mom" macro documentation) renamed as 
> "intro.doc".
> Using Weird-2000, it worked exactly as Larry described, so I guess that
> Weird's ability to recognise and silently convert from HTML, regardless
> of the file name suffix, was first implemented in Weird-2000.

I dug the Smelly Dell laptop out of my lateral at work, spent entirely
too much time getting it connected to the network to download one
23K file (IT has diddled with the wireless & naturally the Dell doesn't
come with Ethernet so I had to find a card), and verified that Weird 97
under W2K does indeed (not) work as Ted described it. OpenOffice
1.1.0 on the same machine *did* open the HTML file as a document.

> > So sending someone an HTML file named
> > as a ".doc" file to be double-clicked on would have left them staring
> > at HTML, at any rate if they were using Weird-97, and this would have
> > defeated Dean's purpose and quite possibly have spoilt his chances of
> > the job.

Good point... and there are a *lot* of people out there who don't
upgrade nearly as quickly as Microsoft would like. And they're
quite likely the very people most likely to not be able to deal with
anything but what they consider "standard." A 1987-vintage book
on writing software documentation talks about a sub-newbie class
of readers called "parrots" -- all they can do is mimic what they've
been taught. (I, less charitably, have referred to such as "keyboard
monkeys.")

But, opening the HTML file using the File menu & saving it as a
"real" .doc file always works, and you can use OpenOffice for that,
so you can still give the people what they want & not pay the
Microsoft Tax. Word Perfect, at least the version I downloaded for
MacOS, reads HTML files as well... so if you have it, it might be
worth trying out.

> It seems to be pretty much guaranteed that every new version of *any*
> Microsoft product is going to behave differently from its previous
> incarnation...

Well, you can pretty much count on Weird being flaky in *any*
version from '97 on. That, at least, is consistent. ;-)

> IMHO, the only way to guarantee general
> usability of a document is to provide it in an open standard format,
> with plain ASCII text being the lowest common denominator....

True. As noted, HTML works well enough for most short documents,
is open, and more or less standard. It should be good enough for
interchanging editable resumes, anyway -- and recruiters are going
to want to do some editing (usually to apply a house style). I'd
rather they ask for Word than for something esoteric like PageMaker
or Quark -- plain text would be better though, and would indicate a
sufficient comfort level with technology that I'd feel better working 
with
them.

A fun exercise just before taking off for vacation....
--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
Unix Text Processing: "UTP Revival"
http://home.alltel.net/kollar/utp/