RMS: Putting an End to Word Attachments

sombragris writes "I've spotted in NewsForge a very interesting editorial by none other than RMS himself on the subject of getting rid of those annoying MS Word attachment that people send. The essay is worth thinking and doubtless worth implementing." I've found that KWord and Abiword both did a fine job of reading Word files - it's the being able to Save As Word where things get messy.

Comments

Personal versus Political

[beth_linker]

I don't think that calling Word "a secret proprietary format" (true as it may be) will make much sense to the average Windows user.

A more general issue is that all of the examples provided are political in nature.

Could one accomplish something similar with a message like "I'm sorry but I'm unable to read documents in Microsoft Word format because I use Linux. Please send your document in a format that I can read, such as ASCII Text or PDF."

Educating people about the political issues surrounding proprietary document formats isn't always appropriate in a business situation. If I need to ask a customer to use a format other than Word, I also need to be able to do it in a non-alienating way. I think that Stallman offers some good suggestions, but the specific examples he provides wouldn't work well in some social contexts.

Re:Personal versus Political

[Buck2]

Could one accomplish something similar with a message like "I'm sorry but I'm unable to read documents in Microsoft Word format because I use Linux. Please send your document in a format that I can read, such as ASCII Text or PDF."

No. The general response (from my experience) has been, "Then you suck and there's nothing I can do about it. You should use Windows."

You _must_ explain why Word attachments themselves are the problem and how to get around them.

I've found the "size of the attachment" argument to be the most effective (and that's relative ... it's a massive uphill battle). Next is inconvenience to me, but that presumes that the sender really cares, and last is the "for the good of computing".

Actually, recently, many users have been bitten enough times with transferring documents up through old versions of Word that they pay attention to, "Do you really want to be using a program which saves information in a form which may be unusable or, most probably, improperly read in a year or two?"

Finally, sometimes I just outright lie and say, "Oh, man, I'm sorry I don't have Word XP (or whatever), could you maybe save it in Word 95 format ... or better yet, save it in text since that's all I really need." Just about everyone gets that.

Re:Personal versus Political

[Darth Maul]

No, I don't think your example would work because an average Windows user would just think that Linux is pathetic if it cannot view files. I think your example is poorly worded.

Perhaps just turn it around, like "I'm sorry but I cannot access the file you sent me, because you sent it in a format that is only usable in Windows. Please use a format that is more accessible to all computer users, such as plain text or PDF".

Maybe?

We first need ...

[bockman]

... a commonly accepted free standard for _editable_ documents.

That is, it should be possible to read and edit the same document with different open-source tools [since there is no chance that we all use the same] without loosing neither text, nor formatting or meta information (like indexes, cross-references, review marks etc...).

Re:.doc is a de facto standard

[Sloppy]

No.

RMS' main problem with Word format is that it is non-standard, and most people probably don't care. But that isn't the only problem that format has. The other major problem it has is the same thing you'll find in most MS formats: it contains too much power. In order to support Word format in a Word-compatable way, you have to support the scripting language and virus capability too.

And that is a Bad Thing, even if you don't give a damn about open vs closed formats. Getting people off Word format is a good idea for everyone except for anti-virus software vendors.

So if RMS' goal seems unrealistic because it's too idealistic, by all means, just be pragmatic instead. And the pragmatic thing to do is say goodbye to MS Word's file format.

Red Herring

[elefantstn]

This is a meaningless point. The fact that a specific subset of users, however large, cannot get at the source has no bearing on its importance. Even though I personally can look at and understand [some] source, I would never be able to look at it all. The value is that I know that there are multiple people looking at and improving the source that I'm not looking at, and doing it from an end-user perspective, not a software-producer perspective. I may not be a kernel hacker, but someone else with my hardware is, and I benefit from the improvements he or she makes to the kernel. "I don't recompile applications" is not a reason to not use open source software.

Re:.doc is a de facto standard

[drix]

That is completely incorrect. The Microsoft Word document format has remained the same since the Office 97 suite. Word 97 can read files saved by Word XP or Word 2000. Their respective feature sets differ, so Word 97 isn't going to pick up on newfangled things like "table styles" that were introduced in later versions. But for plain old text and tables, they are all interoperable. In fact, in a specific attempt to make the different versions interoperate, Microsoft added a feature in Word XP entitled "Disable features not available in Word 97". It's under Tool->Options->Save if you're interested.

And by the way, you shouldn't be so quick to underestimate Microsoft's morals/motives. They're monopolistic and nosy and untrustworthy, granted, but they do make good products that are easy to use and featureful. It's naive to believe that they are into just screwing the customer over with every successful revision. If they really were that stupid and antipathetic towards the people paying the bills, I doubt they'd be the largest software company in the entire world.

Re:Thats not the problem

[Chris Burke]

But it's true that the vast majority of Word's users wouldn't modify it even if they could. Hell, back when I used StarOffice on a regular basis I never changed any of the code, mostly because I didn't have the time to sort through thousands of lines of code to tweak one variable.

It's about having the freedom to do this, not necessarily using it.

To take an analogy from another post, I wouldn't buy a car with the hood locked so only the dealer could open it. But let me be frank -- there is really nothing productive I could do by opening the hood, except check the oil. I'm useless with cars. But being -able- to is good. Plus, I know that if I had a friend who did know cars, they could modify it.

Similarly, I am very glad that I have rights under the Freedom of Information Act, even though I've never used them and may never feel the need to.

Just because you, personally may never hack a line of code in an app doesn't mean that you don't benefit from having the right to. Remember, you have the right to and so does everyone else, and "everyone else" includes a lot of programmers.

Now how do I do this and stay in business?

[TheMCP]

Look, I'm a consultant. Staying employed requires that I make my clients happy, and part of doing that is making them feel that doing business with me is an effortless task.

Clients, unconsciously, have a scale in their head that weighs how much they've put into me versus how much they've received back from me. Every little thing I ask them to give me or do for me reduces their perception of the benefit/cost ratio, and reduces the likelyhood they'll use my services again. Really, clients generally want me to come in and pull a completed job out of thin air with no assets from them, and much as they technically understand that they have to give me stuff to work with they don't actually like it.

So, I make a point to bend over backward for the client on the little stuff so that when I do have to ask the client for something, it's always something that's really important to the project. Convincing them to support free software does not constitute "important to the project".

I can just imagine telling a client I can't read their Word file. They'll think I'm incompetent for being improperly equipped and replace me.

Like it or not I'm stuck with Word unless a court breaks up the Microsoft monopolies and businesses start using more of a variety of software. I can give my clients PDFs, but that isn't going to change their file habits anytime soon.

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