Stylesheets you get to specify again and again and again



  • When I was hand-coding some RTF today (everybody needs a hobby, I suppose), I found that Word didn't display the text using the styles I was sure I specified, yet did show in some inspector window that the paragraphs were using those styles plus overrides.

    Digging around in the RTF documentation, I found this right after an example of RTF code:

    Note that the properties of the style were emitted following the application of the style. This was done for two reasons: (1) to allow RTF readers that do not support styles to continue to display formatting correctly; and (2) to reveal the additive model for styles, where additional property changes are “added” on top of the defined style. Some RTF readers may not “apply” a style when only the style number is used, unless the accompanying formatting information is provided as well.

    So … you can set up a style so that you can refer to it with a single RTF control word, but then have to specify all the visual parts of the style (like the font, its size and weight, etc.) again just so they will actually be rendered … It has me wondering what the point of styles is at all, then, other than a few cases like controlling document flow and generating tables of contents.



  • RTF is a silly place. Let's not go there.

    And now for a pun:
    You read the RTFM.



  • @Ben L. said:

    RTF is a silly place. Let's not go there.
     

    Indeed. Oracle deserves a full section at the forum, but I guess that Word shoud be either completely ignored, or have an entire site devoted to bashing it. There can not be a middle term.

    (I prefer to ignore it, the most as I can, with all my strenght.)



  • @Mcoder said:

    @Ben L. said:

    RTF is a silly place. Let's not go there.
     

    Indeed. Oracle deserves a full section at the forum, but I guess that Word shoud be either completely ignored, or have an entire site devoted to bashing it. There can not be a middle term.

    (I prefer to ignore it, the most as I can, with all my strenght.)


    To be fair to RTF, the .doc format is more fucked up than the .rtf format.



  • @Ben L. said:

    RTF is a silly place. Let's not go there.

    When I was working on it, I more than once wished I hadn't, certainly.



  • @Ben L. said:

    To be fair to RTF, the .doc format is more fucked up than the .rtf format.

    So is a hooker with herpes compared to a hooker with syphilis. Doesn't mean I would want either of them.



  • @dtech said:

    @Ben L. said:
    To be fair to RTF, the .doc format is more fucked up than the .rtf format.

    So is a hooker with herpes compared to a hooker with syphilis. Doesn't mean I would want either of them.


    So is there any rich text format which is good? I suppose basic HTML would work, but then there's always someone who will try to embed scripts, or interactive SVG, or load resources from external servers, or redirect, etc. causing incompatibilities.



  • @anonymous235 said:

    @dtech said:
    @Ben L. said:
    To be fair to RTF, the .doc format is more fucked up than the .rtf format.

    So is a hooker with herpes compared to a hooker with syphilis. Doesn't mean I would want either of them.


    So is there any rich text format which is good? I suppose basic HTML would work, but then there's always someone who will try to embed scripts, or interactive SVG, or load resources from external servers, or redirect, etc. causing incompatibilities.
    no love for lateX?

     



  • @ratchet freak said:

    @anonymous235 said:

    @dtech said:
    @Ben L. said:
    To be fair to RTF, the .doc format is more fucked up than the .rtf format.

    So is a hooker with herpes compared to a hooker with syphilis. Doesn't mean I would want either of them.


    So is there any rich text format which is good? I suppose basic HTML would work, but then there's always someone who will try to embed scripts, or interactive SVG, or load resources from external servers, or redirect, etc. causing incompatibilities.
    no love for lateX?

     


    Not supported in MS Office or LibreOffice. Whoever manages that format clearly doesn't give a fuck about end users using it, so neither do I.



  • @anonymous235 said:

    Not supported in MS Office or LibreOffice. Whoever manages that format clearly doesn't give a fuck about end users using it, so neither do I.
     

    It's a Turing complete rich text format. Whoever (that would be Knuth) created the format clearly didn't want it to be used by people that can only barely operate WYSIWYG editors.



  • @anonymous235 said:

    So is there any rich text format which is good? I suppose basic HTML would work, but then there's always someone who will try to embed scripts, or interactive SVG, or load resources from external servers, or redirect, etc. causing incompatibilities.

    Depends on what you want to do, I'd say. My purpose here was to allow a program to write its output, with a little basic formatting, to a document that can be opened in a word processor. RTF seemed like a decent choice since most word processors can read it, and I don't care what anybody does with the files after my program has created them.

    @ratchet freak said:

    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.


  • Considered Harmful

    You can use XSLT to easily transform XML data to a variety of formats. If you throw XSL-FO into the mix you can even render to PDF, PS, RTF, etc.



  • @Gurth said:

    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.



  • @ratchet freak said:

    no love for lateX?
    The LaTex website says it best:

    "LaTeX is pronounced «Lah-tech» or «Lay-tech», to rhyme with «blech» "

     




  • @El_Heffe said:

    @ratchet freak said:

    no love for lateX?
    The LaTex website says it best:

    "LaTeX is pronounced
    «Lah-tech» or «Lay-tech», to rhyme with
    «blech»
    "

     



    But I can pronounce blech in at least four different ways!

    bleh
    bleh-ck
    LaTeX
    bleh-tch



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?
    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.
    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

     Ohhh. That is over 3 minutes with a modern internet connection...about 90 seconds with a really good one.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

     Ohhh. That is over 3 minutes with a modern internet connection...about 90 seconds with a really good one.


    For me, it was about three hours.

    Source: I downloaded LaTeX two days ago.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

     Ohhh. That is over 3 minutes with a modern internet connection...about 90 seconds with a really good one.


    For me, it was about three hours.

    Source: I downloaded LaTeX two days ago.

    Something is slow (it could well be the server that is sourcing the download, or some part of the pipe rather than your specific connection), but that is only about 1.21 M-Bits per Second... Pretty darn slow. The "normal" fiber downloads here are SLA'd at 75MBit/S, but I get good peaks just over 100MBit/S, making it about 131 Seconds...

    If you have the URL (I too can be lazy) then I would do a comparision test [over the weekend]

    <colgroup><col style="width: 48pt;" width="64">
    <font face="Calibri"></font>
    <colgroup><col style="width: 48pt;" width="64">
    <font face="Calibri"></font>


  • 13 minutes for me, assuming proper CDNs that saturate my connection. By that I mean not Ubisoft.

    Bennel's 150KB/s is really slow.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

    Wow, what's there? A virtual machine running a full custom OS running LaTeX?



  • @anonymous235 said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?
    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.
    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.
    Wow, what's there? A virtual machine running a full custom OS running LaTeX?



  • I'm going to go ahead an hypothesize they have a two-hour-long video tutorial in there.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

     Ohhh. That is over 3 minutes with a modern internet connection...about 90 seconds with a really good one.


    For me, it was about three hours.

    Source: I downloaded LaTeX two days ago.

    Something is slow (it could well be the server that is sourcing the download, or some part of the pipe rather than your specific connection), but that is only about 1.21 M-Bits per Second... Pretty darn slow. The "normal" fiber downloads here are SLA'd at 75MBit/S, but I get good peaks just over 100MBit/S, making it about 131 Seconds...

    If you have the URL (I too can be lazy) then I would do a comparision test [over the weekend]

    I don't have a link because it was an interactive downloader. But I have something much, much better.

    That's MilwaukeePC 6Mbit by the way.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Ben L. said:

    @TheCPUWizard said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Gurth said:
    @ratchet freak said:
    no love for lateX?

    Adding LaTeX output was a lot easier than RTF, I know that, and I had more knowledge of RTF than of LaTeX before I started. Then again, that's not too surprising since LaTeX doesn't require you to think about presentation, while RTF forces you to do just about nothing else.

    The downside of LaTeX: it's a 1.6GB download if you want to write anything using it.

     Ohhh. That is over 3 minutes with a modern internet connection...about 90 seconds with a really good one.


    For me, it was about three hours.

    Source: I downloaded LaTeX two days ago.

    Something is slow (it could well be the server that is sourcing the download, or some part of the pipe rather than your specific connection), but that is only about 1.21 M-Bits per Second... Pretty darn slow. The "normal" fiber downloads here are SLA'd at 75MBit/S, but I get good peaks just over 100MBit/S, making it about 131 Seconds...

    If you have the URL (I too can be lazy) then I would do a comparision test [over the weekend]

    I don't have a link because it was an interactive downloader. But I have something much, much better.

    That's MilwaukeePC 6Mbit by the way.

    5 megabytes of web space? What could you possibly do with all that!

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ben L. said:

    I don't have a link because it was an interactive downloader. But I have something much, much better.

    That's MilwaukeePC 6Mbit by the way.

    Oh well, at least we now know where all those old 56k modems went. They went to Milwaukee.


  • @joe.edwards said:

    5 megabytes of web space? What could you possibly do with all that!
    I had to check the calendar - 5MB is what my ISP gave me in 1998.



  • @ender said:

    @joe.edwards said:
    5 megabytes of web space? What could you possibly do with all that!
    I had to check the calendar - 5MB is what my ISP gave me in 1998.

    You have a weird calendar.



  • @ender said:

    I had to check the calendar - 5MB is what my ISP gave me in 1998.
    How many MB is that in today's megabytes?



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @ender said:

    I had to check the calendar - 5MB is what my ISP gave me in 1998.
    How many MB is that in today's megabytes?

     

    Corrected for inflation, it's actually less.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    Corrected for inflation, it's actually less.
    Of course. You'd have to have the storage expanding faster than the speed of light otherwise.


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