Ultimate Document Format

On the web there are tons of document types, pdf, html, postscript, rtf, doc, etc. As a programmer trying to get text out of these documents to make them searchable is a royal pain. What if there was one format for everything. At first it sounds cool, but then you think of what a nightmare it would be to try and standardize all the kinds of things that someone would want to put in a document and all the different ways it is viewed. So what if it wasn’t standardized and fixed? What if anyone who wanted to could make their own viewer and embed it in another format or replace an existing format. The code for rendering each embeddable format would be stored on the web and anytime you wanted to view something the viewer is downloaded and run in a secure environment ( java, managed C#, scripting language etc.). The idea isn’t a new one. You can embed all kinds of things in a word document. The thing that is new though is that the code for the viewer is not fixed and it is not monolithic. If I wanted to make a smiley face that spoke when you clicked on it, I would write the code for the smiley viewer/editor, publish the source code (open source), and then publish a document with the smiley. When someone viewed the document it would download the code to render, interact, and edit, the smiley. When they clicked on it would say its thing. Each embeddable thing would implement some baseline functions, for viewing, printing, searching, extracting text, mouse and keyboard interaction, etc. And then I’d sit back and watch the innovation happen. Ever surf a 3-D animated document that updates itself instantly anytime anyone makes a change ?