File formats on disk are the question.Speaking personally, the more supported formats the better. Use MS formats, ps, pdf, Tex, ascii, your format, DBM (if it is extensible enough for your application), etc. If you are speaking about the default format, I would use the one that is the quickest to parse for you that does everything you want. Options are very important, make sure there are at least formats that can be understood by Windows users AND Unix users.
Concerining information on the formats, I don't know any information personally. However, you would probably want to look at the source to such things as MsWordView ( http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html ). On their website, they also list the following for obtaining information on Office formats:
simply go to the following address:
http://msdn.microsoft.com
>From the list on the left of the screen select MSDN library online
If you are not a member of the MS Developer Network you will need
to join - it's free.
Once you have subscribed to the MSDN, you can obtain online copies
of the file formats. To do this, follow these steps:
1.On the MSDN World Wide Web site, click MSDN Library Online.
2.Under Member Area, click the Library Online tab.
3.Double-click Microsoft Office Development.
4.Double-click Office.
5.Double-click Microsoft Office 97 Binary File Formats.
6.Select the format you are interested in (Word, Excel, Powerpoint,
etc.)
I hope that helps.
As far as the flaming, there are very few people who think that there shouldn't be Unix utilities to read MS formats, (most people really really want them) and those that do would not be interested in an office suite anyways. Again, though, I think that a lot of people would NOT be interested if you did _only_ MS formats.
my $0.02
Cheers,
Mike Benedict
-- to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion