Which open document format?

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 06:37:51PM -0700, Alan Dayley wrote:
/_A coworker and I are looking to use an open documnet format but are not sure what to pick. The company has used Lotus WordPro for years and is currently experiencing MS Word creep. We want to start creating the documents in a format usable (viewable and editable) by the most number of word processing tools possible.
/_
/_So, the general requirements would be:
/_
/_1-A format readable and writable by as many word processing applications as possible.
/_
/_2-The document format intended by the author is predictably maintained (tables look right, columns correct, images in the right place, etc.) no matter what application is used to open, edit and save it.
/_

XML / HTML ?
I just started a new company and I went back and forth on what
document format, etc, etc to use. I had quite a few internal forms
to create in addition to form/documents meant for public viewing;
some of which are actual legal documents. I choose strict HTML
and spent a considerable amount of time creating style sheets to provide
my desired formating. All of which are W3C compliant.
Doing this, in combination with some php magic, my employees
can obtain these documents from anywhere they have an Internet connection.

Not quite sure how my setup would hold up or need to be adjusted
in a multi-user environment where those users are actually
'editing/creating' the docs....but it might be worth exploring.

-mike