Subject: SC22 N3114 - SC 22/WG 5 Contribution on the Use of Word for Docum ent Distribution

From: Marisa Peacock <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 09:44:49 -0400

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N3114

TITLE:
SC 22/WG 5 Contribution on the Use of Word for Document Distribution

DATE ASSIGNED:
2000-06-06

SOURCE:
JTC 1/SC 22/WG 5

BACKWARD POINTER:
N/A

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Other Document (Defined)

PROJECT NUMBER:
N/A

STATUS:
For information and review.  This document will be discussed at the
September 2000 JTC 1/SC 22 Plenary Meeting in Nara, Japan.

ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI to SC22 Member Bodies

DUE DATE:
N/A

DISTRIBUTION:
text

CROSS REFERENCE:

DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Def

Marisa Peacock
ANSI
11 West 42nd Street
New York, NY  10036
Telephone:  (212) 642-4976
Fax:             (212) 840-2298
Email:  [email-masked]

__________________ end of title page; beginning of document
______________________

Proposal: 	That SC22 cease to use Word for document distribution

                   	John Reid, WG5 Convenor

Word is not a standard and is unsafe (it provides a mechanism for
the import of viruses). It is not readily available to those running
systems other than Microsoft's. Marisa Peacock reports that she can
easily circulate documents in HTML or PDF instead. 

.........................

APPENDIX

I asked WG5 for comments on this paper. Here is summary of the replies: 

OPPOSED:

1. Christian.Weber: 
I personally would not mind Word format at all, since Word is *the one
format* which is used anywhere in corporate environments. In fact *all*
documents which are created within Siemens (or all partner companies I
know) are created first in Word, and then they might be converted into
something else (which is likely to induce all kinds of problems - e.g.
HTML conversion never works properly without sophisticated tools, and
PDF conversion requires Distiller which is no standard tool). I don't
like Microsoft products particularly, but they simply set the standard
within corporate environments, so I would appreciate if this format
would become acceptable.

I don't believe that other platforms cannot interpret Word documents:
free Word viewers are available for Windows, and I suppose they will be
available for most other client platforms as well. If documents are
just viewed with a viewer then there is no risk of macro viruses
either.

2. Lawrie Schonfelder
Everyone can read pdf, the reader is freely available, but you need
relatively expensive prorietry software that is not all that widely
used (relative to word) to create it. As far as I know 90+% of people
who use PCs or MACs are likely to use WORD. If you are using Linux or
solaris then there is the free downloadable star-office product that
can read and write word format documents perfectly well. This is also
available for use on PCs if you happen to prefer CORAL or LOTUS
wordprocessing products.

PDF is not dejure a standard and is much less defacto one than word. We
have to work with what we have. PDF is acceptable if it does not need
further editing by the receiver but word is probably the nearest to a
workable editable format with reasonable retention of document
features.

IN FAVOUR:

1. Petri Mahonen: 
I agree very strongly. Word is causing much more problems and potential
danger than any good. I am very happy with text or ps in my Unix
environment; and anyone using Win/NT can use pdf as well.

2. Miles Ellis:
I complained about Word being used to distribute documents several
years ago for exactly the same reasons that John cites.  When Bill
Rinehuls was the Secretariat for SC22 he used to distribute documents
in text form wherever possible, and used pdf on most other occasions.
Since pdf is an acceptable format in which to submit standards, etc, to
ISO for publication, unlike PostScript, this always seemed a sensible
approach.

Most people can read standard HTML - whatever that is - and it is
unlikely that any standards documents would contain Explorer or
Netscape proprietary extensions which would cause problems for some
people.  So HTML is probably OK for simpler documents.  However, pdf is
preferable, IMHO, for draft standards, etc, simply because it is
acceptable for the final document and HTML is not.

3. Jerry Wagener:
Hear! Hear! HTML and PDF are the (_only_ sensible) ways to go.  

4. Walt Brainerd:
I objected to this years ago, with no luck, of course.  With StarOffice
(and others) available for free, I can now read and distribute Word
documents, so things aren't so bad, but it is still obnoxious to use a
nonportable nonstandard system.

5. Richard Maine:
My only comment is that I emphatically support your position, for
whatever that might be worth (probably not a lot).

I use Staroffice.  Its better than having to shut down everything I was
doing and reboot into windows, but "perfectly" is a rather large
stretch.

Its also quite a hog.  Staroffice is a large part of the reason I
gave away my dual cpu 170 mHz Sun box (sorry, Keith) in favor of a new PC.
Staroffice was too slow to be acceptable for routine use on the
Sun box (and I couldn't get enough money for a faster Sun box, but
could scrounge enough for a PC running linux).  With the PC, I can
run staroffice with acceptable (though certainly not great) response
times, but it still produces lots of strange artifacts - far from
"Perfect".

6. Niki Reid:
PDF would certainly be my choice of the way to go for portability, with
apparent ease of passing it through the pipeline.

7. Van Snyder:
I have no trouble with PDF, PostScript or HTML, but Word is
troublesome.  I heartily support your proposal.

8. Toon Moene:
Another thing that most people seem to forget is that Word documents
are often "edited" versions of other documents.  The way the "deletion"
of the deleted parts is done makes it possible to retrieve them.  A
Norwegian guy wrote on a Web page a few months ago how he used this to
gain knowledge about the plans of his competitors by using WordPerfect
on Linux, which (apparently) was able to show the "deleted" parts.

Note that this is hearsay, on my part.  I have to use Microsoft Word as
the chairman of the works council in my Institute, but personally would
rather use a key punch.

9. Erik Kruyt:
I strongly support this proposal.  PDF would be fine for documents on
which you don't have to make changes.

10. Phillip Helbig:
> As far as I know 90+% of people who use PCs 
> or MACs are likely to use WORD. 
Some folks (including myself) would see this as part of the problem.  
The vicious circle is "everyone uses it" (usually for some reason not 
relating to the quality of the product) so let's make it the default.  
This is what creates many problems with respect to microsoft in the 
first place---no pressure for quality, since the users won't change to a 
competitive product anyway (this is related to the use of proprietary 
formats, of course).  Of course, there are the other issues such as 
security as well. Of course, many folks don't use PCs at all! 
> If you are using Linux or solaris 
Many folks don't use linux or solaris.

11. Malcolm Cohen:
I support using formats other than Word because:
 (1) The "Word virus" issue [killer issue 1]
 (2) The "recovery of deleted text" issue [killer issue 2]
plus the minor points of
 (3) New versions of Word create (by default) output files incompatible with
     all previous versions.
     I for one have no intention of buying Word 2000 when I already have
Word 6.
 (4) I don't particularly want to install some huge great star-office
product
     either.  Particularly just to read something like an agenda which ought
     to have been distributed in plain text in the first place!
     Again, I don't want to have to go installing all this stuff again for
     Word 2001, Word 2002, etc.
As for the document editing question, the issue here is whether we impose on
everyone who wants to *read* the document the burden of Word format.  Those
creating simple documents (i.e. not standards etc.) won't particularly miss
the all-singing all-dancing typesetting capabilities; and for the (few)
project
editors, the burden of producing pdf (or finding someone to convert
PostScript
to pdf for them) is not particularly great.  Particularly since they'll want
to do that anyway for the version that goes to ISO Secretariat.

12. Matthijs van Waveren:
I am in favour of your proposal. I would indeed prefer it if ISO would
stick to its own guidelines. ITSIG (Information technology strategies
implementation group) has prepared a "guide for the use of IT in the
development and delivery of standards" [1]. This guide has been
designed as a resource for all people who have a role in the
development of consensus standards within the community of
international, regional and national standardization organizations. In
table 2 of section 5.1.3 of this guide, the text and HTML formats are
recommended for simple administrative documents.

[1] Guide for the use of IT in the development and delivery of
standards, second edition, IT Strategies Implementation Group.
http://www.iso.ch/itsige/guide/200.html
<http://www.iso.ch/itsige/guide/200.html> 

13. Mike Delves:
I support Miles' suggestion that pdf be the distribution format.

14. David Muxworthy:
I support the proposal.

OTHER COMMENTS

1. Baker Kearfott:
FYI, and for what it's worth, there is free software, "ps2pdf" to 
convert from PostScript to PDF. I think it comes with Ghostscript.

2. Bernard Pichon:
We can use the .rtf ouput from Word (or WordPerfect) with no
(macro)virus.  This can be read by WordReader (free) or other products
(e.g.  StarOffice), or by rtf2tex (??).  In my opinion .rtf (for
editable documents) or .ps or .pdf are acceptable, for short texts, I
prefer .txt (and not .htm).

3. Kurt Hirchert:
Ultimately, it doesn't matter much to me -- I have both Word and
Acrobat Reader.  I might suggest that a fallback position could be to
request that all distributed Word documents be in .rtf format rather
than .doc.  To the best of my knowledge, a .rtf file won't contain
viruses or deleted text, and since it is a textual format, it is at
least marginally readable without.

4. Craig Dedo:
The major disadvantage of formats such as PostScript or PDF is that they
are essentially read-only formats.  It is very difficult or impossible to
import them into WordPerfect or anything similar so that you have an
editable
document.  In contrast, it is a fairly simple and straightforward matter to
import documents in MS Word, RTF, or other word processing document formats
into the word processor of your choice.
  Adobe's quoted price for the full Acrobat is $250.  This is more than
enough money to buy a complete office suite from any of the major vendors as
a
competitive upgrade.
  Yes, there are serious problems with Word macro viruses.  However, it is
fairly simple and straightforward to protect yourself against them.  And, if
you use a word processor other than MS Word, the Word viruses almost always
don't translate into the target document format.