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

Bernie will sue

[CrazyClimber]

How can we get rid of Word attachments without incurring the wrath or Bernie Shifman? If he can't send out his resume, he'll probably sue...

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...).

how's this for a solution?

[issachar]

There's a very simple way of changing MS-Word's default format to something other than .doc format. I use Word a fair bit, and my copy is set to automatically save everything in rich text format. I have yet to encounter ANY formatting that can't be saved in that format. (Maybe because I don't write Macro viruses).

Explain to people that if they do this, their documents can be read by MANY more people, and that it doesn't affect them at all because MS-Word can read .rtf documents seamlessly. (It just treats them like regular .doc files). Don't forget to explain that occaisionally the system will complain that "some formatting might be lost", but that's not really true. It's only the very strange formatting that no one ever uses that would be lost. This has been good enough for all the non-technical people I've explained this to.

.

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.

RTF file with .doc extension

[mbrubeck]

In fact, I believe that if you rename an RTF file so that it has the .DOC extension, it will appear to Windows users to be a normal Word document. Opening it will launch Word, which handles the file without complaining. This can be a useful trick for sending to recipients who require .doc files. You shouldn't abuse it too much, because it will inconvenience non-Word users who can deal better with RTF than DOC.

A problem with free software advocacy

[sterno]

In the commentary RMS says:
Most computer users use Microsoft Word. That is unfortunate for them, because Word is proprietary software, denying its users the freedom to study, change, copy, and redistribute it.
Most users of Microsoft Word don't actually care about having the freedom to study or change it. Most don't even care about the right to copy or redistribute it except in making some limited copies for friends or to install on other computers. For most people Word works well and the issue of it being proprietary never effects them in any way they are likely to be aware of.

Until free software advocates can make it clear to the average use what the benefits of that freedom are, it will be very difficult to wipe out things like Word attachments. We have lots of people preaching to the geek choir and people convincing businesses of the value of open source (not free software, and it's an important distinction). But nobody is really convincing the average computer user of the value of free software (aside from possibly the "free as in beer" sense).

Simply responding to Word attachments with a political tirade isn't going to do anything except make the people who sent them to you think you're some commie wacko. The people who are likely to be receptive to such communiques are those who probably wouldn't send you the word attachment in the first place.

This actually worked...

[Toddarooski]

At my old job, our engineering department successfully lobbied for people to stop sending documents as Word attachments.

Their explanation was a little simpler, which was basically, "Hi. Those of us with Unix machines don't have Word installed, so it's a major pain in the ass for us to read that document you just attached. Can you send it in a different format?" Personally, I wouldn't recommend using any of the examples in the article, as they all sound pretty self-righteous and would probably make an average recipient more likely to walk over and give the writer a massive wedgie than to change their email attachment behavior.

The drawback, of course, is that the people who were sending Word attachments in the first place were still composing them in MS Word. And so you've either got to deal with the huge mess that is Word's "Save as HTML" or you lose all the pretty formatting (which does sometimes include important diagrams or tables) when it's saved as text. But I suppose it's a moral victory, if nothing else...

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:Give as good as you get.

[PD]

Good idea. I just tried that with my boss. Now I have another question: do you know anybody that is hiring a UNIX/C++ programmer with 12 years experience?

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.

Bah, convert it to PDF

[Mr_Perl]

Here's a perl kludge I use to convert doc on the fly into PDF and open in acrobat from kmail:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $fn=shift;
my $or=$fn;
$fn=~s/.*\/(.*)\.doc$/$1/o;
$fn=~s/ /_/g;
$or =~ s/ /\\ /g;
`antiword -p letter $or | ps2pdf - > $HOME/tmp/$fn.pdf `;

exec("/usr/bin/acroread $HOME/tmp/$fn.pdf");

It does require antiword which you can obtain from freshmeat.

Re:Give as good as you get.

[isorox]

A few months ago I was introduced to Latex.


Another geek gets laid!

:)

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

RMS is incorrect

[rabtech]

"And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not. "

This statement is incorrect... Microsoft redefined the file format with Word 97 to make it extensible. SO the basic text, formatting, images, etc are all compatible between Word 97, 2000, and XP. I can save a Word file in WordXP and open it in Word 97 without any sort of conversion or downgrading... its just that the "extensions" not supported by Word 97 won't be displayed or might be displayed incorrectly.

The differences between 97 and 2000 are especially small... we have about 85% of our users on Office 97 and they exchange documents both ways with our other users of Office 2000. Of course they don't do anything special with fileformats (remember: these users think their keyboard can 'get a virus') -- the Word 97 users can open the Word 2000 files without conversion.

In Defense of Microsoft...Yes, Microsoft.

[Bowie J. Poag]

( I've been critical, very critical of RMS in the past. My motivation for writing this post isn't to put him through the meat-grinder..I'm merely addressing some points that weren't addressed in his article.)

" Don't you just hate receiving Word documents in email messages? Word attachments are annoying, but worse than that, they impede people from switching to free software. Maybe we can stop this practice with a simple collective effort. All we have to do is ask each person who sends us a Word file to reconsider that way of doing things."

If these people happen to be your friends, sure. But any sysadmin who's worked more than an hour in any professional capacity can tell you that people simply don't understand email. Yes, to you and I, we know about RFCs, the fact that the email infrastructure of the net was never meant to handle anything but raw ASCII.. They don't know these things, nor do they care to learn why sending binaries via email is a bad idea. They just want to send 80MB .avi files of them waving at a camera to Grandma.

IMHO, what needs to happen is a revamping of the email infrastructure to the net, to turn it into a binary-friendly medium. Its a kludge to do anything short of that. Providing HTML links to binaries stored at the originator's machine, MIME, UUEncode/UUDecode are are simply methods of sidestepping the issue and putting a band-aid on a garden hose. As a side note, the same "effort" you speak of could be directed at revising badly out of date protocols like FTP as well. FTP is a NAT-ignorant protocol.. Good luck trying to move data in anything but an Active mode.

" Most computer users use Microsoft Word. That is unfortunate for them, because Word is proprietary software, denying its users the freedom to study, change, copy, and redistribute it. And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not. They may even find, several years from now, that the Word documents they are writing this year can no longer be read with the version of Word they use then."

Lame as it is, this is Microsoft's right. If they want to, they can make Word pop up an evil clown covered with blood that randomly insults you every 18 seconds if they feel like it. Its their product. If you don't like the design of their product, you are welcome to come up with something better, as the folks behind AbiWord, KWord, StarOffice and others have done. In my opinion, Microsoft has done an exemplary job in allowing users to import legacy documents. Infact, you'll still have the ability to import documents from MS Works, a cheapo text-based version of MS Office that ran on DOS systems more than a decade ago. I've personally never encountered the sort of situation you're describing. Besides, if they opened up the standard and described how Word documents are formed, any number of parties (ourselves included) would ultimately pervert the standard, intentionally or not. I'm glad they keep that door shut. Theres only one version of Microsoft Word 2002 documents--Not 18 different ones, all slightly different from one another.

"Someone I know was unable to apply for a job because resumes had to be Word files. Even governments sometimes impose Word format on the public, which is truly outrageous."

The government also requires us to ride on/in motor vehicles when we use the highways, regardless of the fact your bike will get you from Point A to Point B. Infact, if you tried to ride a bike on an expressway, you'de be pulled over within minutes, fined, and/or carted off to jail. Whether we like it or not, Word is the standard when it comes to the exchange of formatted electronic documents. That may change. It has in the past, and will likely continue to do so in the future. Even today, we're already moving away from statically formatted Word-like documents and into more sophisticated markup-based documents like HTML/XML. Don't whine about not being to ride your bike on the expressway. Its illegal because nobody wants the disruption and inconvenience... The same reasons rest behind why Word is the current standard format for electronic business documents. It prevents disruption and inconvenience for everyone to agree upon the best standard available at the time the decision is made.

"Example No. 1: You sent the attachment in Microsoft Word format, a secret proprietary format, so I cannot read it. If you send me the plain text, HTML, or PDF, then I could read it."

If you say this to anyone in a business environment, two things will happen. They'll think youre friggin crackpot, and they'll be less inclined to conduct any further business with you. Get serious..The way to get to your goal, Richard, is not to retroactively repeal the existing standard in favor of ye olden days of document exchange. Develop a BETTER standard than Word, make it available to all so that they'de be crazy not to implement it, and in so doing force Microsoft to conform to it. After all, they had to do so with HTML, did they not? And JPEG? And GIF? And DivX, and MPEG, and Java...the list goes on and on.. None of these formats were created by Microsoft, yet, Microsoft was forced into adopting support for them simply due to their popularity and pervasiveness. BMP didn't win out over JPEG. PCX didn't win out over GIF. Get the picture? The best way to get where you wanna go is to put one foot infront of the other and enjoy the slow march of progress and adaptation, not to turn around and do backwards somersaults of disruption till you get there.

This argument was terribly misguided. It identifies a problem that doesn't exist, and suggests and equally pointless and disruptive method of fixing it. I didn't buy a CueCat then, and I'm sure as hell not gonna buy a CueCat now.

Cheers,