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RE: RTF specs

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HI Jeremy,

<YourComment>
Sorry, no.  While RTF's design seems intended to permit this, most
reader implementations (such as the MS WinHelp compiler) do not
operate in a compliant manner.  WordPerfect is especially nasty.
Even MS Word, the "reference implementation", is inconsistent.
</YourComment>

<Reply>
Yes implementations are inconsistent like browsers are with HTML and so are
other implementations following standard specs. So implementations more or
less follow the spec and more or less are of good quality. You picked some
bad implementations but also some are good ones like Word 2000 or Ventura.
So, idem as for browsers....

<YourComment>
This is true.  It's also a very poorly documented moving target.
The docs *look* comprehensive at first glance, but when you actually
proceed to implementation of anything non-trivial, you quickly find
that the "language" is badly underspecified.  You need to do a lot
of testing, with MS Word, to find just the right constructions.
But then, it is a "standard" with no real standards group behind
it, only MS...
</YourComment>

<Reply>
Yes the spec is not well written and not exhaustive. You say that word is
the "reference implementation", maybe but its quality is of the same quality
than the XML specs providing a XML document with a bad link to its DTD and
no stylesheet attached to it. Yep, "reference implementation" are not
perfect :-) controled by a group or not. I

Recently found a new versions updated by ISV writers with annotations,
probably these guys where frustrated with the bad writing. Nonetheless we
can also say the same thing about specs coming from groups like you say :-).
So, some specs are better written and intelligible than others. I agree,
quality is not constant - comming from Microsoft or comming from groups ;-)
</Reply>

Regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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