MS Format Flames Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers

[Bill Stewart]

> > Oh get over it.  There are other formats.
>You ever heard of XML?  HTML? RTF?

There are output formats and input formats.

It's easy to output data in formats other people can read -
if you want something prettier than ASCII,
HTML is usually fine, though there's not much support
for embedded pictures as opposed to separate files.
XML is a meta-format - you can't really guarantee that
anybody else's XML tool can read your XML tool's documents,
because they may not have all the same objects.

If you want to give them something quasi-immutable,
there's always PDF.  That lets you be rude _and_ proprietary :-)
Postscript is more flexible, but too many people don't have
tools to read it with.

Input formats are harder, because Microsoft keeps adding
backwards-incompatibility every time they upgrade Office,
just to force everybody else to upgrade.
OpenOffice can often help, but not always.

Microsoft does make free readers for Word and Powerpoint.
They're only intended for running on Windows,
but perhaps they work on WINE?