RE: Status of RTF format?

On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Bruce Bailey wrote:

> It is probably just as easy to teach people to produce
> well-formatted HTML as it is to get them to use Word styles in a
> powerful and appropriate fashion.  So why not spend your time on
> the former than the latter?

Well, in the situation in which I find myself, it's because the
authors consider Word to be in their skillset, and are (by and large)
open to having that skillset polished and extended; other authors
consider their authoring skillset to be Latex, and, again, are more or
less open to having _that_ skillset polished.  But if asked to produce
a web page, they would typically use Netscape Composer, or an obsolete
version of Front Page, or an obsolete version of Word's own quasi-HTML
extruder, to produce a piece of DTP, and would have little interest in
learning more.

> As you
> observe, getting them to understand the point -- and then to care, is the
> harder problem.
> 
> Alan, do you agree with me that the "average" RTF document is NOT
> accessible?

I think you already know the answer to that.  But I would answer it
more generally: the "average" document _of_any_kind_ is not
accessible, for the reason that you just agreed with me about: authors
do not take accessibility on board as part of their authoring process
(where it could be incorporated at little cost), and afterwards they
assess the potential costs of retro-fitting accessibility as being
unreasonably high, so (unless compelled by law or policy to do so)
they don't even attempt it.  Sadly.

best regards