More on "Webify Word? No Way!"

More on WebDAV:

 http://www.webdav.org/deltav/protocol/draft-ietf-deltav-versioning-08.htm
(co-authored by Christopher Kaller of Microsoft)

Look at the source code:
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 9">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 9">

For those of us who question why this Internet Draft html would be published Microsoft Word:

WebDAV conventiently stores all resource properties in an XML document. WebDAV (and now DeltaV) is being developed to use MSIE5+ as
a front end in conjunction with the Windows 2000 platform Web Folders feature acting as a remote client.

JimWhitehead, Chair of the webDAV Working Group and Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at UCSC
(http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/papers/whitehead_diss.pdf)e xplains that the goal of the new DeltaV protocol is to take out "a lock on
the resource, write its
contents, write the property, then unlock". He goes on to say that if you  "wanted to add this property capability for a third-party
client, like Word, then you're
currently out of luck".

So why author the Web version of the the document linked above in Word?

Again we ought to refer to the source code:
<o:DocumentProperties>
  <o:Author>Geoffrey Clemm, Jim Amsden, Christopher Kaler, Jim Whitehead</o:Author>
  <o:LastAuthor>Geoffrey Clemm</o:LastAuthor>
  <o:Revision>2</o:Revision>
  <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
  <o:LastPrinted>2000-07-07T16:26:00Z</o:LastPrinted>
  <o:Created>2000-09-11T16:53:00Z</o:Created>
  <o:LastSaved>2000-09-11T16:53:00Z</o:LastSaved>
  <o:Pages>61</o:Pages>
  <o:Words>19456</o:Words>
  <o:Characters>110903</o:Characters>
  <o:Company>World Wide Web Consortium</o:Company>
  <o:Lines>924</o:Lines>
  <o:Paragraphs>221</o:Paragraphs>
  <o:CharactersWithSpaces>136196</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
  <o:Version>9.3821</o:Version>
 </o:DocumentProperties>
</xml>

MS Word 2000 embeds version data into the head of the document using the MSO markup flavor of XML.
Word autolocks a document that is under development so that one user, or group member is editing it at a time.
When the editor is finished writing, saves the document and closes it, the version data is embedded.
When the document is closed, it is unlocked and another user or group member can continue its development.

Word is an effective authoring and version control application for Internet publishing.
Web pages authored in Word are kind of crufty.
This author hopes that WebDav will eliminate the need to rely on Word to control authoring and versioning for Web document
publishing.


S. Matthew Hersey, MA Ed.
Technical Writer, Operations
Certainty Solutions, Inc.

"Certainty in an Uncertain World"

Received on Friday, 29 September 2000 12:42:54 UTC