MS WORD doc scalability

[mitchm]

I'm looking to implement document generation on the fly into a web application.

.RTF is possible, but the client base is familair with WORD (as most people are). I would like to implement WORD .DOC generation, but is this scalable with a large user base?

If it opens an instance of WORD each time, there must not be a large # of concurrent generations possible. Is there anyway to go about this in a scalable/efficient manner?

I would hate to give my clients a file format they are not comfortable with; even though .rtf opens in WORD.

-Mitch

btw- is .rtf generation faster/ better scalable?

[mitchm]

I've noticed I can write/eidt an html file and prompt the user to download the file as a word document.

It seems like a fast and easy way to replicate word .doc generation on any OS.

Does anyone have any experience/comments with this approach?

[Doug G]

As far as I know, if Word opens an html document and resaves it it's saved as html, not in the word internal .doc format. You might want to check this, I seldom use Word with html.

[mitchm]

No, I read in an .htm file and prompt for download as a .doc file, word then treats the htm file as if it was a .doc, which is pretty neat.