Was it explicitly said that the HTML needs to be handwritten?
Because otherwise, I don’t really see the point of that approach. People using whatever tools allow them to produce an adequate result in an efficient manner, that’s a good thing. For some people, that tool might be Microsoft Word.
If the specification said “use HTML format” and the application was indeed in HTML, I don’t see a problem.
I was first introduced to HTML in high school when I didn’t have a Microsoft Office license. That meant that I actually did the opposite for writing assignments and hand-wrote my HTML document to print from a browser.
Not to take away from your point in any way. This discussion just reminded me of that and I realized the irony.
The lack of specification is likely intentional there - apparently they're not trying to distinguish between people who can or can't follow a spec; but rather they observe that for some people the obvious or default or simply easiest way to get a bunch of text in HTML would be to write it in Word and press 'export', and for other people the obvious or default or simply easiest way for them to do the same would be to write HTML directly. It seems plausible that those are two quite distinct groups of people, and apparently they prefer one over the other.
Because otherwise, I don’t really see the point of that approach. People using whatever tools allow them to produce an adequate result in an efficient manner, that’s a good thing. For some people, that tool might be Microsoft Word.
If the specification said “use HTML format” and the application was indeed in HTML, I don’t see a problem.