[wplug] Book published using Open Source software

[Bryan J. Smith]

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I see what you were talking about DTP's and layout and
> how OOo handles it better than Word in that having a caption on
> an image in Writer means it makes a frame for the image and has
> the text in there.

First off, understand that OpenWriter (OOo Writer) is still _not_ a
DTP, but still a WP.  But it does a decent job at standardizing tags,
as StarOffice itself has since version 3.0 in the mid-'90s.

Secondly, understand that the design of MS Word has 1 goal, to force
you to upgrade every version.  To that end, it is beneficial to
_change_ tags, incompatibly, every 2 versions.  That's why Microsoft
stopped even differentiating after Word 7.0 (95), and Word 8.0 (97)
through Word 11.0 (2003) are considered the "same format" even though
they are not.  Knowing this, you understand why Word doesn't even
have a good, underlying, documented language -- not even for WP.

Third, I was demonized, regularly by many people (not by merely
fellow MCSEs, but even select Linux "advocates" who clearly still
rely on MS solutions) when I said Microsoft did not implement Office
11.0 (2003) with XML, which was only content and utterly lacked style
(let alone documentation).  Understand Microsoft's prior XML approach
was _not_ to expose the underlying format, but to allow 3rd party
content to be added.  XML is _not_ a standard, but a template
standard for creating vendor (even proprietary) standards.

Fourth, I think the whole Office XML is a joke at this point.  It is
based around encapsulating objects (binary) in tags.  This is not
being done for document longevity, but portability.  I.e., Microsoft
Office is _not_ portable off of variable data alignment IA-32 (x86),
but if they encapsulate objects as bytes in a markup, it solves that
problem.  The marketing bonus is that they can say it's now a formal,
standardized, documented "markup" language, among other pure BS.

> Having an image with the caption under it and being able to move
> them together all around the doc? 
> Not possible in Word from what I can tell.

MS Word doesn't implement it even remotely correct, at least from the
standpoint of how DTP -- let alone even old typeset -- does.  I'd
love to do a full day seminar on showing the 101 reasons why it is
impossible to do professional publication with MS Word.




-- 
Bryan J. Smith   Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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