Subject: RE: (SC22WG20.1653) Personal contribution to ISO/IEC on some problems with WinWordor RTF formats for ISO/IEC electronic document distribution

From: Michel Suignard <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 16:31:32 -0700

Dear all, this is also a personal contribution of somebody who happens
to work at Microsoft, this is reflecting my own view and is in no way a
position from the company itself. Anyway I would like to make some
remarks:

1) beside the embedded font issue, RTF is still a very portable format.
And in fact by providing the font with the document as a font.ttf file
you can deal with this. I understand that by doing so you are loosing
some control over the font, but such a font can contain legal wording
which restrict their use within the scope of viewing the target
document.

2) Providing 100% binary compatibility between localized versions of
such a complex product like Microsoft Word is not an easy task. I won't
go in details here but there are often conflict between ease of use in a
given language and universality. It is nevertheless a goal of the
product to improve in that matter. I routinely exchange documents with
Japanese collegues using their Japanese version without problems.

3) It is not a secret anymore that we are working on a Unicode version
of Word for the next worldwide release due this year. That version will
allow inclusion of multilingual text and alleviate many of the concerns
shown by my eminent collegue.

Michel Suignard

>----------
>From: 	Alain LaBont/e'/[SMTP:[email-masked]]
>Sent: 	Thursday, October 10, 1996 1:07 PM
>To: 	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
>Subject: 	(SC22WG20.1653) Personal contribution to ISO/IEC on some problems
>with WinWordor RTF formats for ISO/IEC electronic document distribution
>
>For your information.
>
>Dear Mr. Brannon,
>
>I already signaled, as an editor, problems that were encountered in SC18/WG9
>with incompatibility of different national versions of WinWord format, which
>is one of the generic formats recommended by JTC1 as an acceptable format.
>
>I understand that this generic format was recommended for practical
>purposes. But on the same ground, I can report the following facts:
>
>-ISO/IEC DIS 14755 was produced (in both English and French versions) on a 
> Canadian French version of Win Word 6.0. The document so produced could not
> be reproduced on paper without errors on the Japanese English and American 
> English versions of WinWord 6.0. This has delayed the work for 3 months. I 
> had to resend documents by air mail to Japan and the USA twice (we believed 
> the files were corrupted) without solving this problem which could not be 
> solved in fact.
>
> Only a paper copy could guarantee the integrity of the document (that
> necessitated local correction of the electronic document). Fortunately we
> are catching up now, results were excellent on this particular document.
>
> The provisional reworking of the DIS in view of producing the final text of 
> the IS in London led to the same problems (fortunately I know what is going 
> on now and can issue the appropriate warnings to the involved secretariats 
> but not all editors are aware of this).
>
> I have personally seen that the UK English version of WinWord 6.0 was 
> considering that the page numbering of the Canadian-French-Word-version text
> is using a wrong parameter (an esoteric message appeared on the screen and
>on 
> paper the following message appears on each page instead of the page number:
> "Error! Unknown switch argument". That reproduced the non printability 
> problems of the previous document in Japan and in the USA.
>
> I heard from a Japanese delegate that the Japanese version is also 
> incompatible with the English version, at least for WinWord 6 and WinWord 7.
> We have to be aware of such problems if the recommendations continue to 
> stand and in practice I do not contest these recommendations until we find
> more universal non-proprietary formats.
>
>-I also tried using the RTF format. Now RTF format does not seem to support 
> embedded TT fonts (at least in the Canadian French version) and this feature
> was essential in reproducing the keyboard symbols that were using an Everson
> monospacing font (no warning is given though). 
>
> Such a level of detail is important as editors assume that their document's
>integrity will be respected with a given format, which is not the case at
>all  here. In fact I am afraid that the RTF files that I sent to you
>recently via  Internet were received corrupted because of this, maybe
>without your 
> noticing it. I understand that we use RTF format  to circumvent the 7-bit 
> Internet SMTP problem but this does not ultimately  solve the problem of 
> fonts so perhaps this format is not so appropriate.
>
>I do not want to jeopardize JTC1 recommendations but I thought I had the
>duty to report to ITTF this problem which could considerably affect editor's
>and ISO work in other areas. Recommendations should be improved *in order to
>document potential problems*. Perhaps (I believe it is likely in fact) in
>the future, with the use of ISO/IEC 10646 coding, and with internationalized
>versions of software (same versions just localized with external files),
>this kind of problems will vanish. But now it is not yet the case that it
>does not affect us. Of course the mandatory paper document that has to
>accompany an electronic file at the involved secretariat is a wise
>precaution.
>
>Alain LaBonte
>Standards Project editor
> in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG9 
>and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20
>
>cc ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG9
>   ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20
>
>