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Coders use text editors mainly, rather than word
processors. So it shouldn't be too much of a surprise
if some of them type in MS Word in the same way
they're used to with vi, emacs, etc. (or even the
way I am formatting this mail for example).
Rather than attempt to "educate" people into how to
use Word properly, an alternative is to take plain text
from them, rather than word processor files. Then you
can impose whatever style/markup conventions you
like as you cut/paste/edit into your documents in
Word/Robohelp/Frame/TeX/html/xml.
I find this can actually be quicker than fixing bad markup
in the first place --- besides, there can't be too many
paragraphs put together by SMEs that don't need
some reworking can there? ;-)
Besides (just for controversy's sake) the fact that people
use "WYSYWYG" word processors in inappropriate
ways is surely just a sign of the major drawbacks with
word processors -- it's possible to write structured
documents, but it's also easy not to. See http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html
for an interesting argument on this point.
Cheers,
Christopher Gooch, Technical Author
LightWork Design Ltd, Sheffield, England.
chris -at- lightwork -dot- co -dot- uk www.lightwork.com
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