Re^2: Running Linux but Exporting as MS Word?

[Ovid]

in reply to Re: Running Linux but Exporting as MS Word?
in thread Running Linux but Exporting as MS Word?

... but I don't know how complicated your documents are.

The intended audience is authors. They need to be able to, in real-time, click on an "Export as" link and save the document to their computer as an MS Word doc and, in turn, be able to send that document to a publisher (any publisher) and not have it opened up and look like a garbled, unprofessional mess.

[davis]

For exporting documents so they look the same everywhere, I wholeheartedly recommend PDF. It looks the same on your (the author's) computer as it will on their (the publisher's) computer. However, producing that PDF may be tricky, and quite possibly unnecessary.

Are the authors fully in control of layout etc? Here's what I'm inferring: you're building a site to allow/help authors write/store some documents of some sort (books; reports; whatever). These authors will decide what layout etc they want for their document, they'll "export" this, and send the exported version to the publisher. Are my inferences correct?

If they are, I'd recommend seriously considering RTF and restricting the authors' options for layout etc — authors are there to produce content, typesetters are there to decide layout. Very few authors (I can only think of one) are actually good at laying stuff out, therefore your system should (IMHO) allow them to create the logical (thought) structure of their documents, and the publisher will bugger about endlessly with the layout.

[Ovid]

Well, theoretically be in full control of the layout, but you raise some good points I hadn't considered. I guess if authors spent more time writing and less time figuring out how to "pretty things up", they'd get more done :)