Thank you everyone for your comments. I am aware that the problem lies entirely in the inconsistent and undocumented .doc format. And I know that rtf suffers from many of the same deficiencies. And I know that pdf is far preferable for most purposes. For reasons that are beyond my control I am required to submit manuscripts in .doc format, and they must conform to very explicit formatting rules. We all know this is dumb, but at the moment I have to deal with it. Please believe that I will be bringing this issue up with the academic societies that I am working with.
The specific situation that I am dealing with is generating an rtf file from a latex source, checking that over in the latest version of OOo that is in testing (2.0.4.9), making any further corrections that are necessary, and then saving in .doc format. There were some problems with the handling of natbib options, for which I have submitted fixes upstream to latex2rtf. The main remaining issues are fonts, with the output document containing a variety of different font families when only one should appear, and equations, which generally just disappear. I'm not sure which of these issues are associated with OOo and which with latex2rtf. I can fix latex2rtf bugs and add support for more LaTeX commands, but I do not have the time or expertise to hack OOo. I will look into Wine with Wordviewer as a first step, as that might help me isolate specific differences between OOo and Word that are causing my problems. If I do have to use Crossover Office it is good to know I can start with a free trial. Cheers, Tyler On 2007-08-03, Andrei Popescu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --DiL7RhKs8rK9YGuF > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Disposition: inline > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 11:41:54PM +0000, Tyler Smith wrote: > >> over in OpenOffice only to find that when the same document is opened >> in Word the formatting is screwed up. > > And you are, of course, aware that .doc format is NOT consistent (and it=20 > was never meant to be). If you need to have the same thing displayed on=20 > the clients/boss' computer as on yours you have to use pdf which was=20 > designed for just that. > > Regards, > Andrei > --=20 > If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. > (Albert Einstein) > > --DiL7RhKs8rK9YGuF > Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" > Content-Description: Digital signature > Content-Disposition: inline > > > --DiL7RhKs8rK9YGuF-- > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
