mark@unicorn.com wrote:
> I read a review of Office 2000 a while ago. They implied that it's not
> actually HTML they produce, but HTML with all kinds of kludgy Microsoft
> extensions and ActiveX controls which may work if you're running Windows
> but will be pretty much useless elsewhere. Given Microsoft's recent
> comments about eliminating open standards, this is not surprising..
Sort of. Word 2000 makes real HTML files, and they usually display OK in both Netscape and Explorer. However, it also records all of the information it needs to convert the HTML back into a Word document, so you end up with a lot of extra meta tags, HTML comments, and XML tags. I certainly wouldn't recommend editing the result by hand! I don't think it resorts to ActiveX controls unless you start putting in content that can't be duplicated in HTML - stuff like spreadsheets, macros, certain types of data entry form, and maybe the automatic index and TOC features (which most people don't use anyway).
If you just want text documents with relatively normal formatting, and you don't expect to do much hand-editing of the HTML, I don't think you'll have a problem. If you need more than that you'll probably want to look elsewhere. I've attached a typical sample of what a converted document looks like, just in case you're curious.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com