Yesterday I attended an excellent talk at ANU by Peter Sefton from USQ on Microsoft Word's file format and XML alternatives.

He demonstrated "ICE" (Integrated Content Environment), a content management system which for courseware. This allows a teacher to write some material with the Open Office word processor and have it converted into a portable and efficient XHTML format for on-line delivery automatically. The system uses a software development type version control system to allow several people to maintain one set of courseware. The software is open source and free <http://ice.usq.edu.au/>.

Peter was at ANU to discuss interfacing ICE to e-archives.

ps: For more on wp conversion see <http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/dm/acsepub.html>.