Re: SEUL: common file formats

[Johan Grape <grape@asgard.dartmouth.edu>]

> Thomas Dietel: 
> 
> IMHO we should not try to establish new standards for data exchange, e.g. 
> HTML or RTF, but open a convenient way to use de-facto-standars (Winword...)
> in our Linux distribution.  Although we can assume that our "target user"
> will know how to use text converters, many people with whom he wants to
> exchange data will not know how to generate a HTML file from their Word
> document, and so our target user will have to cope with this "standard".  

I don't think this is a really good idea.  word is a moving target,
hard to convert from/to etc.  I am a firm believer in HTML - there
are numerous browsers, and now even some "wysiwyg" editors.  After
all, HTML is much more in the "spirit" of unix - focus on content!

I believe we should always ask ourselves:  "Is this a true feature,
or are we simply trying to copy Win95".  If SEUL ends up looking
and behaving like win95 - what is the real benefit?  The only
thing we will gain from this is a lot of casual users who have
no interest in the underlying system or nor in the difference
in paradigm between linux and win95 etc. I believe the important thing
is to expose the new user to this paradigm.  Take a teaching, handholding
attitude that says: "You might like word, but *this* is the reason
TeX/LaTeX is superior and worth learning.".  You might like the filemanager,
but can it do this?  With examples etc.  A tour of linux....

Well - that's sounding awfully ambitious, but the frequent proposals
that linux should have win95 look and feel, win95 filemanager (or
apple finder) etc. etc. appear to me to be entirely counterproductive.
Lets focus on linux's strengths, not its weaknesses.

Johan




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