Yes, you got it totally right. But why do you believe that html would be on par with proprietary formats? I mean, is there any possibility that html produced by markdown (or similar languages) interpreter won't be displayed correctly in most of browsers (including IE)? I thought it's basic and standartized enough. I do agree, though, that S5 is likely to have some issues.
> 2009/10/18 Илья Илембитов <ilembi...@yandex.ru>: > > I believe I made some progress with my little research concerning suckless > > word processing. > > Basically, I realised that things get much easier as soon as we realize > > that there is no need for paper-centric formats. > > > > First, there is no standard here, that is correctly supported by all office > > suites on all platforms: ODF (as well as OASIS) is not getting any decent > > popularity any time soon, common MSO formats often lack needed > > compatibility (even now when I have to bring .doc files created by > > OpenOffice to be printed on a Windows machine with MSO I get my formatting > > partially lost). > > > > Second, there are lots of restrictions being imposed by those formats. They > > all employ the paradigm of paper-centric documents (documents that are > > created to be printed), whereas lots of documents people create today (I > > would say, almost the majority) won't ever be printed and are actually > > intended to be viewed and edited only between computers: be that sharing > > over the Net/email, passing them on portable media, etc. Thus, one could > > actually switch from paper-centric paradigm to screen-centric paradigm, > > which changes the way we think of formatting - e.g. we don't need page > > numbering, the references, links and TOC appear in a whole different form. > > Many other changes come here. > > > > For documents that will actually get printed one could probably employ > > something like LaTeX/lout/troff/etc - and that's the whole different story. > > > > Then I learnt about the fact that Opera employees actually use HTML for all > > the documents they share within company. Opera is actually interesting due > > to the Opera Show format, which is an approach to creating presentations > > using HTML/JavaScript/CSS only + some easy markup. The only drawback > > (AFAIK) is that Opera Show is supported only by Opera Browser (there should > > be addons for Firefox, though). > > > > Then there is S5 with a similar approach (and I believe, better > > compatibility - not sure about IE6, though). > > > > But what about word processing and spreadsheets? > > > > Word processing is easier, since there are lots of lightweight markup > > languages (MarkDown being the most famous ones) that support all the basic > > formatting and produce an XHTML output. Here one could see what I called a > > screen-based approach: when I define the formatting for my text, I actually > > define the structure of my text, instead of defining the beautifiers > > (bold/italic/underline) or font sizes manually - the language interpreter > > does that for me. Besides, lightweight markup languages are nice here, > > because usually their tags don't get in the way of a spell checker. > > > > Spreadsheets are a bit trickier. I was looking for a lightweight tool to > > produce plain text files that can be easily converted to HTML. There is SC, > > which is really nice (only depends on Curses), has VI-like keybindings and > > produces .sc files. Which are actually just plain text files with a > > specific formatting, that can later be converted to CSV (and be used in > > xhtml documents). And I think that it should be pretty easy to convert CSV > > to any lightweight markup language syntax for tables. The only drawback > > with SC is that it doesn't have Unicode support (the last update of SC was > > in 2002, when Unicode wasn't popular enough), so I couldn't get it to work > > with non-Latin characters. So I am looking for something similar, but more > > recent. Any ideas here? > > > > Second, tools like SC naturally can't produce graphs. I know there are lots > > of plot utilities, but I couldn't really find what I needed. What I wanted > > was a small (C, preferably) console tool (so that I could invoke it right > > from VIM) that could produce images with graphs (or diagrams) using the > > provided CSV file. That image can later be used within the resulting xhtml > > file. > > > > So, basically, to sum up, this way one can get a pretty flexible single > > document type that can easily mix text elements with tables (produced by a > > spreadsheet tool like sc) and graphics (be that images or graphs for the > > provided data in the tables). This document can be later viewed and edited > > (provided we send the source files as well) on literally any machine with a > > web browser (including IE6). And of course it can be easily published on > > the Web. > > > > This way, one can use almost any text editor that can: > > -highlight syntax (for MarkDown or any other lightweight language) > > -invoke external tools (for conversion of table files, producing graphs and > > the final conversion to html) > > -properly wrap lines and words (which is why nano, being a really nice, > > easy and tiny editor is not a good solution here) > > > > to replace existing office suites. > > > > What do you think? Can this approach work in real life - for creating > > academic papers with non-strict formatting, lecture notes, articles - for > > sharing with your friends, teachers or colleagues that may or may not have > > any computer skills? > > > > I believe this approach can be easily implemented within Emacs environment > > (using org-mode and muse-mode, but I would like to implement this idea in > > VIM (or any other text editor), too - but I need a spreadsheet calculator > > and a plotter for that. Don't want to cause a flamewar here, of course. > So reading your mail can be summarised as a 2x2 matrix: > WPS WPP > SPS SPP > WPS means word processor screen presentation, WPP means word processor > print presentation, SPS means spreadsheet screen representation, SPP > means spreadsheet print presentation. > Ok, as far as I understand what you are proposing is WPP and SPP are > mostly not interesting and can be avoided in 90% of all cases. > For WPS and SPS you come up with HTML as the presentation format + > some source tools right? > I mean that can work, but is not any better as using propietary formats. > To sum up my view: I think there is a lack of decent WYSIWYG word > processors (for both, screen and paper presentation), but MS > Word/Powerpoint is still the leader in this area, and there is a lack > of usable spreadsheet processors (again MS Excel is the best one can > get). > I agree there should be good replacements, but I don't expect them to > appear in the OSS world very soon, and I pretty much doubt we at > suckless can produce something good in the short term. > Though I'm open minded to see what people use and why they think > that's good. Your proposals however are just HTML imho, and I'm not > very convinced about that, not because I think HTML sucks, but because > HTML is a moving target and never settles and will never settle, and > your documents will look totally different every once in a while (esp > if you enrich it with CSS and JS). > Kind regards, > Anselm > -- wbr, Ilembitov
