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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!newsspool.doit.wisc.edu!night.primate.wisc.edu!nntp.msstate.edu!cssun.mathcs.emory.edu!cc.gatech.edu!byron From: byron@cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: 27 Apr 1996 08:43:13 -0400 Organization: College of Computing, Georgia Tech Lines: 52 Message-ID: <4lt4p1$8u3@virgo.cc.gatech.edu> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <31769650.284D5C90@lambert.org> <4lg7ev$isk@news.missouri.edu> <4lmu6m$3cp@complete.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: virgo.cc.gatech.edu NNTP-Posting-User: byron Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:22321 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:841 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3517 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3368 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:18142 comp.os.linux.advocacy:47098 In article <4lmu6m$3cp@complete.org>, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote: >Justin "Rhys Thuryn" McNutt (rhys@vortex.cc.missouri.edu) wrote: >: Terry Lambert (terry@lambert.org) wrote: >: So you just write two modules: tex2msw6.o and msw62tex.o. Distribute >: them pre-compiled with the source for the rest of the package. Be >: happy. The Linux word processor just has to be capable of reading and >: writing Word docs. It doesn't have to reveal how it's done. > >Why? > So that Free Unix folks can view/print/edit Word 6 documents. I don't necessarily think it needs to be to TeX, but a conversion to something we can read and manipulate would be good. >Word isn't a standard under Windows. Around here, most people I know run >WordPerfect. WordPerfect was excluded from this discussion for 2 reasons: 1) It isn't #1. It isn't even close. Word is a de-facto WP standard in the PC world. 2) WordPerfect is already supported under Linux. The SCO version works fine and Caldera is currently releasing a native Linux Port. What this means that Switching to a free Unix is a possibility for your folks. However they were Word users, it would not be possible. I wasn't discriminating against WordPerfect, it's just further along in its free Unix development. > >The only true multi-platform, popular, familiar, and publicized standard >capable of handling all necessary information for multiplatform document >transfer, conversion, and processing that we have to date is PostScript. Um. You missed editing. Editing is important. And even in that case we'd need a converter from Word 6 format to postscript. Happen to have one laying around that doesn't require Microsoft Windows and Word 6 to convert? I have no problem amending 'Word 6' to 'Popular Windows Wordprocessors with proprietary document formats' but that's quite a mouthful. BAJ -- Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of... Byron A. Jeff - PhD student operating in parallel - And Using Linux! Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 Internet: byron@cc.gatech.edu