From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs as a word processor (ways to convert Word/RTF proprietary files) Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2020 10:15:01 +0200 Message-ID: <83eejenvy2.fsf@gnu.org> References: <0E591E8B-FD55-4829-8421-6F2C02AFD20C@mit.edu> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="17209"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Jean Louis Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Dec 25 09:17:15 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1ksiHj-0004NP-EX for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 25 Dec 2020 09:17:15 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37144 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ksiHi-00088g-B6 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 25 Dec 2020 03:17:14 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:34340) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ksiFt-0007dd-6v for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 25 Dec 2020 03:15:21 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:54236) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ksiFs-0001aL-Ij; Fri, 25 Dec 2020 03:15:20 -0500 Original-Received: from 84.94.185.95.cable.012.net.il ([84.94.185.95]:1447 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1ksiFr-0006gm-LO; Fri, 25 Dec 2020 03:15:20 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Jean Louis on Fri, 25 Dec 2020 10:14:40 +0300) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:261721 Archived-At: > Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2020 10:14:40 +0300 > From: Jean Louis > > - there are Word importing capabilities by using other available free > software. Emacs could advise users to install some external software > to convert from Word. There are also Free Software word processors out there, so why do we insist on having such capabilities in Emacs? I think you underestimate the amount of pressure applied on any J.R. Hacker having a daytime job to use MS Office. You cannot be a useful and appreciated part of an organization without having to use those tools, because all the correspondence and all the documentation is based on that. And there's no real Free Software alternative, certainly not based on Emacs. The alternative solutions you suggest are extremely impractical. They require people who know nothing about DOCX, DocBook, XML, ODT, and other formats to become proficient enough in these to figure out whether every feature of MS Office can be supported. (Do _you_ know if everything is supported?) You further ask them to be able to create for themselves a bunch of scripts or programs to convert the Office files to something else, edit it in Emacs, then convert back without losing important features of the original document. You then ask them to find Emacs packages that allow conveniently and reasonably WYSIWYG-ly edit the converted Office documents. (Are you aware of packages to conveniently edit HTML or XML or DocBook or ODT? what are they?) Asking people to jump through such hoops to be able to read and edit a document created by MS Office is a huge turn-off, and will be rejected by most people, because in this aspect a word processor is just a tool to do a job, and do it quickly and efficiently. Most people don't have the time and energy, let alone talent and skills, to do a programming project each time they need to review a document or a spreadsheet. This is why it would be useful to have this kind of capabilities in Emacs: to enable users to visit MS Office documents with "C-x C-f", edit them in some specialized WYSIWYG Emacs mode, and finally save them with "C-x C-s". If under the hood this runs some converters, it doesn't matter. > - one of best for me personally is `antiword' it just extracts simple > text. But I have no Word files on computer. > > - another good one is Abiword which has Word import/export > capabilities on the command line. So a simple Emacs function of few > lines could already use Abiword as external convertor and import file > into Emacs word processing So you are saying that, from the Free Software philosophy POV, it is not okay to have Emacs be able to access such files, but it _is_ okay to use the likes of Abiword to do the same? I don't think I see the logic in that. If you are opposed to using MS Office file formats, you should refuse to look at them, in any form or shape, and instead request that the person who sends them produces them in some free format instead. That would be a logical position which I can understand and respect.