
This time, it's Microsoft which must adapt or die (Science & Nature refuse Word07 - 'incompatible with MathML') - bootload
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2096652,00.html
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aston
What you really mean is, Science and Nature haven't updated their process yet
for the new Office. The standard they prefer right now is MS's penultimate
release, Office 2003...

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gaborcselle
I doubt that MS would really change their formula editor's output format for
Science or Nature. This problem probably affects less than 0.1% of all users.

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bootload
_'... This problem probably affects less than 0.1% of all users ...'_

But think of the kick-on effect in education institutions and research labs an
important MS stronghold. All the best institutions, scientists, researchers
want to get published in Science & Nature so they are forced to find an
alternative. Who knows what this alternative is. I imagine science students
would be hard-core Tex, Latex aware. Institutions have the following formats
to choose from ... _"MS Word (preferred), PostScript (PS, EPS or PRN), PDF,
WordPerfect, Rich Text Format (RTF) and plain text (TXT)"_ ~
<http://tinyurl.com/36hh43>

_"... The file format needs to be general enough to express such material
faithfully. Unfortunately, MathML 2.0 isn't able to handle embedded XML
namespaces and as such simply isn't general enough to represent Word 2007
technical documents. Accordingly we had to develop an XML approach that is
general enough and we created OMML (Office MathML) ..."_

For those who have invested the $$$ in Office it appears that MS wants to give
them the tools, just not of the open source MathML compatible type. So there
are numerous hacks authors have started ~ <http://tinyurl.com/32j48e>

_"... Science and Nature will probably upgrade some time in the next few
years. But I suspect that the rump of non-users of Office 2007 will remain
large as the web becomes an increasingly important repository for our file
..."_

This bit I think is the crux. You no longer need word or the MS platform as
much as previously to create documents & distribute them. I don't think it's
Science & Nature shunning MS as much, as the costs in accepting the MS Word
format at this point in time. Instead the costs are being pushed back onto
submitters who use this particular MS Word format.

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pixcavator
It's already dead, haven't you heard?

