RE: ALL: attachments

HERE HERE!!!
 
I was going to express the exact same sentiment.  One possibility would
be to always send a .pdf along with any proprietary formats. The key is
to NOT "encumber progress by lack of tool support." as Chris so well put
it.
 
Chris: please forward this to the list for me, I still cannot post to
it.
 
Mike
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Christopher Welty
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 7:39 AM
To: Jeremy Carroll
Cc: public-swbp-wg@w3.org; public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
Subject: Re: ALL: attachments
 

I find when writing collaboratively that MS Word's "change tracking" and
editing facilities are very useful.  Sure there are ways to do this in
HTML (like inventing a style sheet with a "change" tag), but they are
not automatic and require just enough extra work that it tends not to
get used.  Mike (Smith) and I tried doing that while editing the guide,
and it just didn't work.  Mike ended up just doing diffs every time I
made changes. 

Anyway, I would never force MS Word on anyone, but it may make sense for
smaller groups, like task forces for example, where all the member of
the group agree, to use something like MS Word for developing a
document, and then posting the HTML version of it when it's in some
version-able draft form.  This way the process is still "open" (in that
there are free MS Word "readers" out there), but the work doesn't have
to be encumbered by lack of tool support. 

-Chris 

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr., Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA

Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055, Fax: +1 914.784.7455
Email: welty@watson.ibm.com, Web:
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty/ 



 
"Jeremy Carroll" <jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com> 
Sent by: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org 
03/08/2004 08:44 AM 
        
        To:        <public-swbp-wg@w3.org> 
        cc:         
        Subject:        ALL: attachments





I took an action to explain methods of dealing with attachments etc in
W3C
lists.

The following describes some policy,

http://www.w3.org/2002/03/email_attachment_formats.html

which in summary is

 plain text is best
 html or xhtml is second best


The harder case that is not explained in full is what do you do when you
have content in some proprietary format, particularly if the files are
large.
e.g. I had a document in a proprietary format that I wished to send to
the
www-rdf-interest list.

Step 1) Create a PDF (if necessary this might been creating a postscript
file and then converting that with ghostview)

Step 2) send PDF as attachment to www-archive@w3.org
This mailing list is public but no natural subscribers, and is intended
for
large attachments, amongst other purposes.

Step 3) Find URL of attachement by looking at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/

Step 4) Send URL to the intended mailing list e.g. see
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2004Feb/0231

where I note the long URL got mangled ...

Reviewing the policy I probably could have created an xhtml version with
only a little more effort than the PDF and that would have been better.

It is particularly important to use this technique of sending to
www-archive
when the attachment is large.

If you wish to send something with member confidentiality to a public
list
the same technique can be used by sending to w3c-archive@w3.org which is
archived at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive/

If you have a complex set of interlinked files in the same directory it
is
possible to send them all as attachments to www-archive and the links
will
be maintained. Example is:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2004Feb/att-0071/


Jeremy