this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Open Document Standard (.odt) for all documents. In all public institutions (it's already a NATO standard for documents).
Because the Microsoft Word ones (.doc, .docx) are unusable outside the Microsoft Office ecosystem. I feel outraged every time I need to edit .docx file because it breaks the layout easily. And some older .doc files cannot even work with Microsoft Word.
Actually, IMHO, there should be some better alternative to .odt as well. Something more out of a declarative/scripted fashion like LaTeX but still WYSIWYG. LaTeX (and XeTeX, for my use cases) is too messy for me to work with, especially when a package is Byzantine. And it can be non-reproducible if I share/reuse the same document somewhere else.
Something has to be made with document files.
I was too young to use it in any serious context, but I kinda dig how WordPerfect does formatting. It is hidden by default, but you can show them and manipulate them as needed.
It might already be a thing, but I am imagining a LaTeX-based standard for document formatting would do well with a WYSIWYG editor that would hide the complexity by default, but is available for those who need to manipulate it.
There are programs (LyX, TexMacs) that implement WYSIWYG for LaTeX, TexMacs is exceptionally good. I don't know about the standards, though.
Another problem with LaTeX and most of the other document formats is that they are so bloated and depend on many other tasks that it is hardly possible to embed the tool into a larger document. That's a bit of criticism for UNIX design philosophy, as well. And LaTeX code is especially hard to make portable.
There used to be a similar situation with PDFs, it was really hard to display a PDF embedded in application. Finally, Firefox pdf.js came in and solved that issue.
The only embedded and easy-to-implement standard that describes a 'document' is HTML, for now (with Javascript for scripting). Only that it's not aware of page layout. If only there's an extension standard that could make a HTML page into a document...
Which uses a bloated and convoluted scripting format specialized on manipulating html.
True, but it offered a much more secure alternative to opening up PDFs locally.
I don't think so. pdf.js has all few monts a new XSS CVE, which is a web thing only. And if you use anything other than Adobe Reader/Acrobat...
Markdown, asciidoc, restructuredtext are kinda like simple alternatives to LaTeX
There is also https://github.com/typst/typst/
It is unbelievable we do not have standard document format.
What's messed up is that, technically, we do. Originally, OpenDocument was the ISO standard document format. But then, baffling everyone, Microsoft got the ISO to also have
.docxas an ISO standard. So now we have 2 competing document standards, the second of which is simply worse.That's awful, we should design something that covers both use cases!
There are now 3 competing standards.
Bro, trying to give padding in Ms word, when you know... YOU KNOOOOW... they can convert to html. It drives me up the wall.
And don't get me started on excel.
Kill em all, I say.