Re: [generguide-user] Re: Contributing Author

[Cameron S. <ca...@sh...>]

On Sunday 07 Sep 2003 6:05 pm, Artur Hefczyc wrote:
> So I don't expect we will be able to support for example MSOffice documents
> in short time.

In order to attract users who have established processes, we need to consider 
how they can incorporate legacy data into the generguide framework.
Either we need to:
1. accept souce documentation in a number of formats, or
2. provide import utilities to import from a number of formats.

Technically, option 2 is much easier and is my prefered solution.

In particular, it would be good to support WORD formats due to it's monopoly 
on documentation.
For ethical reasons, I'd prefer to provide import utilites from WORD rather 
than accepting WORD as a source document.  Reasons being:
1. WORD mixes content with presentation which makes it hard to export to a 
number of different formats and styles.
2. WORD does not conform to Open Standards.
3. WORD forces vendor lock-in and hence license lock-in.  Something that 
should be avoided in an open source project.
4. I don't like the way Microsoft does business and try to avoid contact with 
them whenever possible.

-- 
Cameron Shorter              http://cameron.shorter.net
Open Source Developer        http://generguide.sourceforge.net
                             http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net
                             http://geotools.org
Senior Software Engineer     http://www.adi-limited.com