universal document file format

[Walter R.]

What is the most commonly used file format for word processor documents?
Word is limited to owners of Word, .rtf is not much better, the new Word
2007 format is also proprietary. .txt is very limited. How about the Open
Office format?

This situation really begs for standardization. It would be nice if anybody
could read everybody else's documents. Is MS the stumbling block in adopting
non-proprietary standards? Any hope for a world-wide standard?

 

[Jezebel]

Ever heard of XML?

 

[Walter R.]

XML, Isn't that similar to HTML? That does not sound like it is a popular
file format for word-processor documents. What am I missing?

 

[Jezebel]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML

You're not the first to observe that the situation "begs for
standardization". XML is the answer the world appears to be settling on, not
just for word documents, but for information exchange in general. It's an
open (non-proprietary) plain text file format "that allows information and
services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that
computers and humans can understand".

It's similar to HTML only in that both use mark-up tags, and both are
derived from SGML.

W2003 documents can be saved as XML; all Office 2007 documents are
compressed XML.

 

[Walter R.]

Thank you, Jezebel

I have only Word 2002. Therefore I can not generate XML files. However, Word
2002 lets me save a Word document
as HTML (Webpage). If I save a .doc file as HTML, can anyone with a web
browser read my file? That would greatly simplify things.

Are there any converters that would let me convert .doc files into XML? I
have never seen an xml document.

Thank you very much

 

[Jezebel]

Are there any converters that would let me convert .doc files into XML? I

have never seen an xml document.

The wikipedia article has examples of XML documents. No you can't convert
HTML to XML (not automatically, anyway). XML tags the contents of a document
according to *meaning*, as opposed to HTML which is concerned solely with
format.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Walter,

If you're running Word 2002 on Windows 2000 or higher you can install the MS Office 2007 compatibility pack and that will add the
ability to save as Word 2007 file format, which is a 'zipped' XML file type, the default for Word 2007.

If you are going to save a Word document for use in a browser the
Save As=>Web Page-Filtered, choice will give it a better chance of being opened in a wider range of browsers, but it does lose some
layout features using that choice.
===========
Thank you, Jezebel

I have only Word 2002. Therefore I can not generate XML files. However, Word
2002 lets me save a Word document
as HTML (Webpage). If I save a .doc file as HTML, can anyone with a web
browser read my file? That would greatly simplify things.

Are there any converters that would let me convert .doc files into XML? I
have never seen an xml document.

Thank you very much

--
Walter >>

--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*