Grassroots Response to .doc E-mail Attachments?

LurkingAbout asks: "Maybe it's just me, but it feels like people are sending Word .doc files as attachments more then ever. Typically it's a friendly acquaintance who doesn't realize that .doc is one of Microsoft's ploys to force the few remaining holdouts, like me, to shell out for a copy of Word (or better yet Office). This morning it was the director of my daughter's preschool with the monthly parent newsletter. I've taken to responding with a polite-but-educational message requesting that the sender save the file as RTF or HTML and resend. If I'm feeling long winded I sometimes go into a diatribe about the Evil Empire. Today I started thinking that maybe there's an opportunity for some grassroots organization here. Maybe a concise well-written boilerplate paragraph for just this situation? Or a link to a web page to help educate the masses who think .doc is like air. What do other Slashdot readers do in this situation?"

Comments

It's been done already

[titaniam]

See this or this. RMS and many others are all over it.

Re:It's been done already

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, this is a ridiculous comment, but a funny one :-)

Re:It's been done already

[svanstrom]

In a way they are just bitching about the problem, if something really needs to be done by a lot of people it needs to be automatic...

Just use procmail to catch the incoming unwanted e-mailattachments; automatically, and instantly, getting an e-mail stating that why the attachment is bad (focus on viruses, filesizes etc; don't talk too much about the monopolistic behaviors of Microsoft, or managertypes won't take your seriously in most cases) is a lot more effectiv than if you hrs or days later send a reply.

Over Reacting?

[Hellraisr]

Don't you think that you are over reacting?

Re:Over Reacting?

[spacecowboy420]

Yes, he is overreacting. You will not get the world to bend to your idiologies. Simply use OpenOffice. I really don't understand the point of crying over .doc(s). As an IT director, I have learned not to try to press my views on customers/business associates. You learn to adapt. There are perfectly suitable software suites available to handle .doc(s) without using a MS app. Get over it, the sheep will come home in good time. Just be prepared to offer a hand during their transition. Make a point of illustrating the advantages of the alternatives whenever the subject of the shortcomings of Microsoft Office comes up, and don't preach - noone likes that.

All those that use computers are not geeks. Consider the fact that they are just trying to distribute their content in the medium most convienent. Seriously. Otherwise you come across like a mormon knocking on their door to tell them about Jesus. Who answers that door?

Re:Over Reacting?

[tdemark]

Mac OS X has made it incredibly simple to send documents in an open format with the "Save as PDF" function that is available any time you print.

This feature is part of the system install and not an add-on.

Now that people can create PDFs the same way they print, I am seeing a lot less of the ".doc-type" documents flying around as attachments.

Instead of running up the anti-MS flag, I usually take the tack of telling them that I got the file, but it looks all messed up on my screen. This is using the fact that people expect MS products (Windows, Office) to have "issues" to plant the seed of doubt that their attachments are being received correctly.

Or, for documents where it is apropos, I mention that the author should consider sending the document out in a format that is not easily edited.

If you show people a simple method (eg - as simple as printing) to guarantee* their documents will look the same on every computer and can not be modified, I have found that they often use it.

- Tony

* guarantee not a guarantee

Re:Over Reacting?

[Christ-on-a-bike]

That seems like a good policy.

What a lot of people don't seem to get is that there are really two use cases for sending documents by e-mail:

1. The document does not need to be modified by the recipient(s).
2. The document is part of a working relationship and will be modified, returned and/or sent on.

In case 1, PDF should be the be-all and end-all. It displays and prints perfectly on virtually any platform.

In case 2, there should be an agreed format for sending. Something like DOC may be acceptable, but if this is the kind of thing the recipient(s) can negotiate, then it may be perfectly appropriate to suggest SXW, text, etcetera.

Problems usually occur when people mistake case 1 for case 2. If exporting to PDF is popularised, this may happen less often.

How is it redundant?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you took "Office" in the question to mean Open Office, you're mistaken. The "Office" he refers to is Microsoft Office. It's not the same thing.

Re:How is it redundant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the Microsoft one is the faster one with the more intuitive interface that doesn't crash as much and has the nice cat to help write documents.

I agree

[xintegerx]

But the quickest solution to ridding .doc documents is not to switch software tools, operating systems, and retrain users. Why not just rename .doc to .renamethisbacktodotdoc before sending it out, thus saving humanity from the hell that is anything microsoft hasn't touched yet?

Give up

[lambent]

I tried. Many times, with many people. Some converted, some ignored me.

I don't bother anymore for just casual acquaintances i'll never speak to again. I just run it through antiword (http://www.winfield.demon.nl).

Am I a traitor? Meh. Preaching to the choir, as well as the deaf (whether purposefully so, or they're just too belligerently stupid to bother paying attention) is a waste of my time as well as theirs.

I recently trolled my old high school's website. Most of all their information to parents and students, including forms neccessary for graduation, are .DOC files.

At any rate, remember: revision tracking is good for a quick laugh when you've got the proprietary-file-format blues.

Re:Give up

[BrokenHalo]

No need to give up - just set up a proforma "bounce" message claiming (it doesn't have to be for real) that the message has been rejected as being in an unacceptable proprietary format and to please resend as text, rtf, html or pdf.

If they don't resend the document, you'll know it wasn't important anyway. :-)

You know it depends

[KingOfBLASH]

For me at least, it depends. On the one hand, many people I work with distribute things in Word format because it's the standard in the organization. I usually just open the files in OpenOffice, and although every once in a while some complex formatting makes a document illegible, it is rare enough that I don't worry about it.

For people who are not in a position to force me to accept their acceptance of Microsoft, I try my best to educate them. The trick is to be polite about it. Most people don't understand, and quite a few will jump at the chance to save $300 by using OpenOffice. The trick is to find their "button".

here's the problem

[nuggetman]

the problem is people don't care. joe average seriously does not give a rat's ass if software is proprietary or not. i've given up trying to tell people why (pick one: comet cursor/word/kazaa regular/etc) is bad because they just don't care. it works for them and that's all they care about.

Re:here's the problem

[Mmm_Coco]

Ohhh you hit on something there. I've used friend's computers, and almost everything on there makes me cringe. Their computer will start up IE as the default browser and they have 3 different toolbars and want me to tell them why ads appear even when they aren't on a website and their wireless network has no encryption at all, and their internet connection is actually running slower because of the sheer volume of information being transmitted by various programs and cookies on their computer. Arrrg!!! Great, now I'm all worked up

Re:here's the problem

[yuri benjamin]

This is why I'm glad my brother-in-law is the family Windows support person and I only help with the linux side of things. My mother uses a Mac so no support required from me, and my brother dual boots XP and Mandrake 9.2, and he knows only to ask my help with Mandrake and not XP. I can truthfully play ignorant about fixing Windows because I haven't kept up with Windows developments since 3.1. My brother-in-law thinks Windows is better than Linux, and for his needs it probably is.

It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[stienman]

"Dear Sir or Madam,

Recently you sent an email containing a Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint Document. Due to security and virus concerns [our company] cannot accept those attachments.

Please use HTML, RTF, PDF, or regular text to transmit future documents to me. It will be necessary for you to retransmit this document in an acceptable format.

If the need is urgent and you are unable to convert it to an acceptable format please fax short documents to xxx-yyy-zzzz. Please call for arrangements to transmit documents with more than 20 pages.

Thank you for your time.

-Adam"

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Bastian]

I do the same, although I'm not in a company so I don't make it sound as official. I usually respond with a blurb either saying that I don't have Word so I can't read their documents and explaining how to save in a different format (most my Windows-using friends aren't really even clueful enough to know that RTF exists, let alone how to choose formats in Word).

If I feel like taking more time, I explain that I don't use Word documents because they are a known vector for virus transfer and encourage so-and-so to use a non-*.doc format for file interchange with other people, too.

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Halfbaked Plan]

If I got a snippy response like that, I'd have a lot of fun with the fax number. It's pretty easy, with a fax modem, to fax someone a 35 page document composed of all black pages.

Uses up a lot of ink/toner and has been known to burn out the stylus on thermal fax printers.

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Gilk180]

The problem with this particular message is that most users will read "regular text" and say, well, I'll type it in Word and save it. That's just text in some people's world.

One of the big shortcomings in the computer education of Joe Average has no idea that there is a difference between what they see on the screen and what is actually in the corresponding file.

For instance, JA says "I click on this file and up pops a picture. The file is a picture." However we all know there are huge difference even among picture formats, but most folks don't know that the picture is really just a bunch of 0s and 1s.

As a CS student, I am always amazed at even grad students who don't understand files/data/characters. A lot of them ask questions such as "Is that file stored in hex or binary?", not realizing that hex and binary are just ways we look at the data. Another common question seems to be "So is a character a letter or a number?" or "I typed 1234 into vi, but when I used read() to get the first integer from the file, it came out 808530483. What happened?"

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just send an email that says "We don't want your business".

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[passthecrackpipe]

"I typed 1234 into vi, but when I used read() to get the first integer from the file, it came out 808530483. What happened?"

Eh, yeah. What did happen? You got me in suspense now. Don't leave me hanging on like this.

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Inominate]

He got the integer value(32bits) of four ascii characters("1234", 8 bits each) Don't if his number is correct or not though.

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[DrSkwid]

Thing is, if the person who sent it to you *does* know about computers, they will know you are a tool.

Try and convince me that there have _never_ been exploits via html & pdf.

Here's the latest PDF one.

Did you know that Melissa and Goga were originally delivered via RTF ?

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[LordK2002]

So what if there have been exploits using HTML or PDF? They are still far less common than exploits using Word and Excel macros, so a security policy that prohibits these formats still has some validity.

More likely the recipient who does know about computers will realise that you hate Microsoft-specific attachments and are using the security excuse to persuade the general public.

K

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also exploits for paint. What's you're point?

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[DrSkwid]

"Dear Sir or Madam,

Recently you sent an email containing a Windows Bitmap. Due to security and virus concerns [our company] cannot accept those attachments.

Please send a photograph to transmit future documents to me.

Thank you for your time.

-Adam"

Using security as an excuse to deny the acceptance of Word Documents is FUD.

There is *no* security risk in *any* attachment, only in the applictions used to process them.

We've recently seen buffer overflow exploits in *many* email clients without even getting as far as *opening* the documents.

Here's just a few :

• Mutt
• Pine
• Mozilla
• imap-2002b Pine , Evolution, Mozilla, Eudora via imap

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[planetmn]

They are less common because fewer people use those formats for document transfer. If I want to write a little virus am I going to write it for a program that 90% of computer uses use, or the program that 1% of people use.

If HTML and PDF were used as often to transmit personal correspondance, you'd see just as many exploits for them.

-dave

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[yuri benjamin]

If I want to write a little virus am I going to write it for a program that 90% of computer uses use, or the program that 1% of people use.

If I want to write a virus, am I going to write it for the platform whose design lends itself to virus writing, or for the platform that makes it difficult to write viruses.

Only if you wanna be ignored

[NanoGator]

"If I'm feeling long winded I sometimes go into a diatribe about the Evil Empire. Today I started thinking that maybe there's an opportunity for some grassroots organization here. Maybe a concise well-written boilerplate paragraph for just this situation?"

If I got an email telling me how using a .DOC file to transmit data was being used to promote a monopoly by an 'evil empire', I'd tell you to take it and stick it up your butt. Sorry to be blunt, but you're going to get a lot of other responses like that. Don't make global issues out of the private use a file format. Microsoft has a .DOC monopoly whether you or anybody else you know uses that file or not. That's how everybody's going to see it. So why make them sound like the bad guy?

Instead, appeal to a more urgent need. "Doh, I can't read this .DOC file. Can you resend it as .RTF?" Easy. Believable. And it won't make you look like you're making a mountain of a mole-hill.

Re:Only if you wanna be ignored

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you don't vote. I bet you don't see the analogy either.

Re:Only if you wanna be ignored

[NanoGator]

"I bet you don't vote. I bet you don't see the analogy either."

I get the analogy, and it's a thoughtless one.

Re:Only if you wanna be ignored

[BigBlockMopar]

Instead, appeal to a more urgent need. "Doh, I can't read this .DOC file. Can you resend it as .RTF?" Easy. Believable. And it won't make you look like you're making a mountain of a mole-hill.

I agree completely with everything that you've said... except the mountain out of a molehill part. It's already a mountain; it's not an exaggeration of the problem.

Here's what I do...

[Wesson]

open the file in TextEdit and deal with it.

I'm all for open standards and whatnot, but non-technical people (professors, friends, family) don't really want (nor, in my opinion, need) to hear about how evil .doc is.

heh ? get over it

[kayen_telva]

I dont like the "Evil empire" any more than you do, but get over it.
It is as ubiquitous as PDF. Why are you not raving about PDF ??

You can get a free DOC viewer here or use OO.

Personally I use OO and it rocks.
If I resend a document I always convert it to rtf, txt, pdf, or another format to kind of send a hint.

Re:heh ? get over it

[Curtman]

It is as ubiquitous as PDF. Why are you not raving about PDF ??

The problem isn't that .doc is ubiquitous, its that its obfuscated. The PDF format isn't a secret, the documentation for it is massive. There's no secrets there.

Re:heh ? get over it

[ColaMan]

PDF is a (relatively) open standard - you can get white papers from Adobe describing how to read/encode PDF files for free and build your own reader/writer if you're enclined.

Notice the lack of any white papers from Microsoft descibing the Word 10.0 format.

And hell, PDF files are *so* much more consistent across PC's - the old "word-repaginate-to-a-different-printer-page-size" has bitten a few of my workmates, let alone the font problems we have between PC's.

Re:heh ? get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of obfuscation by over-documentation? Now you have.

Re:heh ? get over it

[venom600]

because Acrobat Reader is free.

Re:heh ? get over it

[Curtman]

Thats about the stupidest thing I've ever read, but I'm sure you realized that before you clicked the 'Post Anonymously' option.

Re:heh ? get over it

[kayen_telva]

so is the ms word reader.

Re:heh ? get over it

[kayen_telva]

*sigh*
Nowhere in the question does he mention the word open or standard.
In fact, his complaint seems primarily to be cost:

force the few remaining holdouts, like me, to shell out for a copy of Word

I pointed him to a freely available MS program to read word files.
The MS equivalent to Adobe Reader if you will.

Kind of eliminates the need for his/her question really, since the "open standard"
issue is some slashdot borg's personal soapbox and does not relate to the question at all.

If he/she is on a unix machine, OO will do the trick, or Anti-Word, or whatever.

In fact, this ask Slashdot is clearly a -1 TROLL

Re:heh ? get over it

[DA-MAN]

so is the ms word reader.

Yeah, because I'm sure that Microsoft makes it available for the same platforms as Adobe....

Re:heh ? get over it

[DrSkwid]

Have you *ever* actually used Anti-Word ?

It is not a solution

Re:heh ? get over it

[SagSaw]

Why are you not raving about PDF ??

Well, I've never had any problem either reading a PDF created with third-party tools in Acrobat Reader or reading a PDF created with Acrobat with various third party readers.

I can't say the same about most of the MS Office formats. If you create a DOC file in Open-Office, it may not display properly in Word, or vice-versa.

Re:heh ? get over it

[ahodgson]

I'm having difficulty finding a binary for my Linux x86-64 system, or source code that I can compile.

Please post a link to one or the other.

Alternately, please post a link to the official, complete specifications for the current word document format so I or someone else can implement a good free reader that is usable on non-supported systems.

Oh wait, you can't, because none of these exist for this proprietary document format.

Arrrrghh!

[moosesocks]

Doesn't this sound a bit rude?

Sure, I wish everyone used RTF. Fact is, they don't. Deal with it. If they sent it in HTML, you'd be complaining about how word mauls the HTML code.

OpenOffice opens .doc. Wordpad opens .doc. Microsoft provides a free viewer for word documents - I think it runs in WINE. OS X's TextEdit opens .doc as well. If that's not universally accepted, I don't know what is.

I'd REALLY like to see PDF universally supported, but it just hasn't happened - until windows ships with native pdf support built-in - both viewing and creating, it will remain a format unusable to AOL users and computer-wielding grandmothers

Now, if you want to complain about people sending out 25mb powerpoint attachments, I definitely understand. But this is just silly and doesn't help push forward the OSS movement. If just makes you look like a jerk.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[lambent]

I recall in some of my CS classes in college, how some TAs and profs were militantly anti-MS. The students, for the most part, went along with it because it was hip to do so ("look at me, i'm a revolutionary!")

Funny thing was, i remember one upper-level class where the staff refused to distribute any handouts (like practice exams, HW assignments, project descriptions) in anything except post script.

Man, the newsgroups and e-mail lists were choked with people asking what to do with these 'PS' files ...

Point being, there ARE formats that are universally supported. But you'll always need user-land tools to use them.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[bhtooefr]

Everything in POSTSCRIPT? Why not PDF? Almost everyone's got Acrobat^WAdobe Viewer...

Re:Arrrrghh!

[jc42]

Doesn't this sound a bit rude? ... Deal with it.

It could be a lot more serious than that. Here's a reply that I've found fairly effective in a few such cases:

You have sent a document in Microsoft's Word format. Such
documents may now contain text encoded in forms that are
patented by Microsoft. Decoding and reading such a document
on a non-Microsoft system or with non-Microsoft software
may subject the reader to criminal charges and/or large
fines for patent enfringement.

Please re-send the document in a format that won't result
in such criminal charges and/or fines if I read it.

This isn't a joke. Decoding proprietary formats can land you in serious trouble in the US and a number of other countries, if the format's owner decides to enforce the laws.

Maybe the courts wouldn't enforce such things. Do you really want to be a test case? If you do, well, I'll cheer you on.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[Olhado]

Actually PDF support is probably closer than you think. Acrobat Reader 6 and later install a PDFWriter print driver (under windows) so that you can print anything that will print to a windows printer to a PDF file (we actually rely on this for the software I work on).

Mac OSX seems to support PDF pretty well and Linux certainly does (I even seen instructions for setting up a CUPS printer on the network to generate PDF files).

How much more universal do you need it to get?

Re:Arrrrghh!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't mind sounding like a paranoid wanker, neither does anyone else.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[jc42]

There's an old joke to the effect that being paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.

It's probably true that we might be overreacting to the threat of prosecution if we decode a message we're sent in a proprietary and patented format such as a MS word doc. Courts in the US and most other jurisdictions have usually (though not always) held that you aren't responsible for receiving a message or broadcast sent by another. But there have been a few worrying exceptions.

The main precedent comes from the recording industry, of course. We currently have a situation where a company can sell me a CD without any warning that it is encoded in a way that can only be read on a few machines. If I find that it doesn't play on my machine, and do a bit of programming to make it play, I can in fact be prosecuted under a number of current US laws. This has happened to others in some highly-public cases, and I have no reason to believe that I'm exempt for any reason.

This has overthrown an old legal principle that a product should be usable for the purpose that it is sold. We now have a situation with recordings that I can pay money for a product, but if I use it for its sole purpose on my own sound equipment, I am in violation of the law.

There's no reason to believe that this won't apply to things like email messages. Microsoft has been very much involved in the DRM efforts, whose sole purpose is to prevent customers from decoding files. They have received patents on some of their newer encodings used in Word docs, and presumably they had a reason for applying for those patents. The only reason for a patent is to control who is permitted to use the technology. So presumably they are serious about controlling who may use Word docs with these new encodings.

The idea that I may be prosecuted for decoding a Word doc may be paranoia. But it is not materially different than the prosecutions for decoding sound recordings by people who want to play them on their home machines.

Note that some of those prosecutions have had nothing to do with "pirating", i.e., making commercial use of a decoded CD. Jon Johansen has been dragged into court for merely writing code that makes a CD play on his own linux box. He wasn't charged with selling anything, his crime was writing software that made a CD play on his own machine. The Sklyarov case here in the US is similar, with the added point that the decoding charges against him were for actions in another country where those actions were legal.

It's not any sort of stretch to think that peole may be prosecuted for similarly writing or using software that makes a Word doc readable on their own machine. If this isn't Microsoft's intent, why are they pushing DRM, and why did they patent those new encodings?

Anyway, I'm not sure I want to be a test case.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just installed Acrobat Reader 6.0.1 for Windows and it didn't install pdfwriter.

I've only ever seen pdfwriter installed by the full Acrobat.

If you read the help in Acrobat Reader and query "create" it tells you to buy other Adobe products.

Re:Arrrrghh!

[sir_cello]

If you sent that in a reply to me, I'd think you were a dickhead, and not very professional.

Just say that you aren't able to read Word documents and could you please resend it in one of the following formats.

People understand the value of money

[ptaff]

Just tell offenders "If you don't send me in .doc format, I won't be forced to buy MSWord to read it."

It's simple, and effective. People are not educated about freedom as speech yet, don't even mention open file formats, but they can understand what a couple of hundred bucks mean.

Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[Guspaz]

"What do other Slashdot readers do in this situation?"

That you should stop whining and go download Microsoft's free Word Viewer, or any number of other free programs that can view word documents. Nobody is forcing you to use Microsoft Word, every word processor on the market today supports the format. Get used to it.

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[eakerin]

Fine, then I'll just start sending all my documents in .sxw format. Then you can just quit whining and go download the free Open Office viewer/editor.

All good right?

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[jtev]

I run Linux You insensitve clod.

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a Word operator transmit one of his documents to a Linux punk?!

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[Guspaz]

Sure, if a free viewer is available, and I receive a document in that format, why wouldn't I go get a viewer?

On the other hand, downloading all of OpenOffice isn't the same thing as downloading a small viewer. But I'm sure there's some minimum footprint install of OpenOffice I could get.

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[Guspaz]

In that case, you have two options:

1) Open the .doc in your linux word processor of choice, since they all support .doc

2) Get drunk you insensitive clod.

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, OOo IS free, you insesnsitive clod!

Re:Nobody's forcing you to buy word.

[jtev]

You know, a serious reply from the author and no downmodding, I realy should troll as an AC

great

[morelife]

save as html

what's worse.. .doc or html mail?

Ping!

[Anonymous Coward]

Generate a large (say 4000x4000) image in the Gimp, with a text message in it saying something like "do not send proprietary binary file formats", save as png, and send that along as a response. (".xcf" format is unnecessarily mean.)

Re:Ping!

[bhtooefr]

Make sure to put a background on that 4000x4000 image, and not a pattern, just to make it larger.

Don't evangelise don't jump through hoops.

[Lochin Rabbar]

For personal emails I accept plain text emails only, any thing else I just delete. If it is important enough they'll get back to me.

Re:Don't evangelise don't jump through hoops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. If you worked for me I would be looking for a way to get rid of you. Seriously. You delete all emails that are not plain text?! That is just insane. There are so many different scenerios that I could think of where that could cause a disaster. Of course if you are the company janitor or something then I guess that it wouldn't matter...

Re:Don't evangelise don't jump through hoops.

[Lochin Rabbar]

Notice I said personal emails, that means they are not business emails. If you worked for me I would fire you for lacking basic english comprehension skills. You'll also note, if you take the time to read the post, that the original submitter was talking about a personal email.

Um... because PDF *IS* an open standard...

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost replied to you non-AC, but that wouldn't have been fair to the other person I modded here.

Then, I almost modded you a troll, but that wouldn't have been fair to you.

PDF specification

Who is it?

[Brandybuck]

If it's your boss or client, then accept the Word document. After all, you're being paid to do so.

But a principle of a school is another matter. Don't tell him your politics. Don't try to convert him to your religion. In other words, don't tell him he's going to go to Hell for assuming you use Windows. Send him a quick note along the lines of "I"m sorry, but I use [name-of-OS] and am unable to read your Microsoft Word document. Could you please send it to me in a public format? PDF or HTML would be fine. Thank you."

And your mother is a third case. Don't confuse her with acronyms like "PDF" and "HTML", because she has enough problems with just using the mouse. Read them with OpenOffice and be glad she isn't calling you in the middle of your favorite show to discuss her gall bladder...

Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[bergeron76]

Why not "upgrade" these virii-venerable files at the [mail] server level? When a .DOC file is received at the mail server, it should be converted into a better "more harmless" format - like .TIFF or .SXC or something.

Inform your users about the change. Send them a .TIFF image in thier email message instead of the .DOC file. If they need to make changes to the document, you can virus-scan it on a case-by-case basis or whatever.

Now obviously, this probably wouldn't work at a Law Firm or some other HIGH-VOLUME document facility, but it's a start and I think it would work fine in many small business scenarios.

Re:Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[bhtooefr]

That'll be interesting... In which cell is the text stored? All in A1? Does it seperate the file and logically throw it in cells? I mean, I know what'll happen with .sxw, but .sxc would be interesting to convert a .doc file to. Hint: .sxw = Writer, .sxc = Calc

Re:Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[nuggetman]

Because as a user, I don't want my email service to be taking initative to change the content of my emails to be "safer". Guess what, I run Windows. I have Office. I use .doc files. I don't run OpenOffice, and I don't need my email provider giving me an .SXC instead, thank you very much. And I sure as hell don't want my text documents made into an image format.

In the position of an email provider, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be responsible for ensuring that all emails were "cleansed".

You don't want .doc files, fine, I'll send you an RTF if you ask nicely. But the worst way to try to get someone to see your point of view is to force them.

Re:Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the worst way to try to get someone to see your point of view is to force them.

There goes 230 years of American foreign policy theory.

Re:Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[hswerdfe]

I have replied to .xls files with OO files before it Getts resistance but at least they get to feal the frustration some of us feel.

(its not just the .Doc its all kinds of closed systems that frustrate, notably Active-X, & IM protocals)

then they might not like it but they will understand.

Re:Why not "optimize" these files upon receipt...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll send you an RTF if you ask nicely

Gee. Thanks. Since you clearly know that there is an issue with DOC and so don't have the defence of ignorance, could you please stop treating me like shit and SEND IT IN RTF IN THE FIRST PLACE? I mean really...

No Problem

[hords]

There is a free word viewer or a free version of Open Office will do the trick.

No monopoly on readers

[Kris_J]

OOo does a better job of reading the latest Word format than earlier versions of Word.

MOran's

[Blackneto]

If you have a customer, and you depend on their money for your livelyhood, you WILL find a way to open their documents without going on a tirade.

maybe later after you have been working with them a few years you can have the opportunity to help them "see the light"

Re:MOran's

[yuri benjamin]

If you have a customer, and you depend on their money for your livelyhood, you WILL find a way to open their documents without going on a tirade.

Of course, it's the golden rule - those who have the gold make the rules.
If I want your money, you decide the format for our correspondence.
If you want my money, I decide the format for our correspondence.

Even if there's no client/vendor relationship, then there may be some other I-want/need-something/you-have-something relationship, in which case the person who has something can dictate the format. Sorry if that makes me sound like an a***hole.

Whoever has more to gain from the correspondence must go along with the other person, or risk forfeiting what they hope to gain.

The exception is govt depts, whom I feel are obliged to provide info in a format that the people they represent can access (in a democracy where the govt works for the people).

My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the hell up, take the file and open it in one of the many 'acceptable' applications that can open .doc files.

Oh, what's that? You've modified OpenOffice so that it doesn't know anything about Microsoft?

come up with a little more diplomatic request

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when I was that conceited. Then I realized, these people are just doing their fuckin' JOBS. They don't care about file formats or free software or Jesus H. Stallman.

So the line I use is "Hey, can you re-send that message after saving it as .TXT? It's easier for my email program to search it."

Which is true. And business-goal-oriented. In fact once a couple co-workers figure out that you can in fact search your email folders for words and pull up old documents, they'll start sending .TXT pretty much all the time. Unless you work with complete computer neophytes, but if you are, .DOC is the least of your problems, eh?

Or if new windows email programs start searching in Word attachments ... then I'll have to come up with something else..

Nice try

[Anonymous Coward]

I can open Word documents with AppleWorks, TextEdit and OpenOffice. There may be other software that can open them on my machine and I'm not even aware of it... Oh yeah, talking of educating people, how about you paying a visit to this site: Microsoft Word Viewer. How many softwares does people need to write to get it through your thick head Word documents *are* accessible?

Thank you, Slashdot.

.DOC a problem?

[malachid69]

Why not just set your system to automatically use OpenOffice to open them? You don't have to buy M$ products.

Re:.DOC a problem?

[retsil]

And if I'm not running a 1Ghz processor with 128Mb or RAM?

Re:.DOC a problem?

[malachid69]

The RAM might be a problem. It runs fine on this machine, which is an AMD 800 with 768MB of RAM.

Virus's

[jamesh]

Just ask if they could please send it in a format which isn't likely to carry a virus, eg ascii, rtf, html, pdf.

re: HTML, if you allow your mail reader to do anything but render a HTML document that someone else has sent you, then you're an idiot :p)

But that being said, it is theoretically possible that anything requiring any amount of processing to render could potentially contain a buffer overflow exploit...

you've got to be kidding me

[jaredcat]

Oh for God's sake, put your tin foil hat away and give it up. DOC is a ubiquitos standard just as much as Windows is a standard, and its well past the point where other options might replace it.

And why you might ask? Well say what you will about the bloat of Word 2003 or how much you hate Microsoft, but back in the early 90's when there were DOZENS of different word processors to choose from and Windows was far from the standard, MS Word took the cake. Microsoft did a better job on Word than the other companies did with the other options at the time, and thats why Microsoft's .doc format is today's standard.

I don't know what you are even complaining about. You can open a .doc file in Windows, on a Mac, on a Linux system, on BSD, on a cell phone, on a PDA, on pretty much anything you want. You can't say that for anything except for maybe RTF, plaintext, and HTML-- and who on earth uses RTF? As for HTML, HTML is not exactly user friendly as a format for editable stylized documents.

"Evil Empire" indeed. This passes for news these days?

Still using MS Windows?

[rawg]

I run a small ISP, and after all the problems that I see with MS Windows I just can't for the life of me understand why people are still using it. They get viruses, adware, spyware, you name it. Their systems get all junked up with applications and crap. They constantly have printing problems. Yet, they just nuke their systems and reinstall everything like it's normal. If I had to reinstall my system every month, I would not use that system any more. I went to a customers home to install internet one day last month and their system was running very slow. I check it out and it's a 1.5GHz system. It took 10 minutes to boot. It would take 3 minutes just to get into the network configuration window. She just shook her head and said, "It used to be fast. I guess I need a new system." I just about lost it.

It's just mind boggling to me.

RTF? RTF?! Sheesh

[Planesdragon]

RTF is a horrible, wretched standard. And it's proprietary, to boot. (Don't believe me? Point me to the standard.)

HTML is an OK format--but, aside from size and some annoying conversion errors, DOC is good enough, too.

My preferred collaborative document exchange format is OOo's file format. The program's free, the file size is small, and it's editable. (For "I'm sending you this file", PDFs work rather nicely.)

However, when OOo files don't work, DOC works just fine.

About OOo...

[jtheory]

This is tricky, because they need to learn more before they try OpenOffice, or they'll be turned off right away.

Before the education process, the trouble with OpenOffice is simple -- as long as they're using Word, they can save a document and most people will be able to read it.

But when they start using OpenOffice, they'll find that when they save a document now almost NO ONE can use it.

Then they see all those choices in the "save as type" dialog and say "whoa, don't want to touch that". Even saving in Word format has 3 choices. They won't know instinctively that HTML or RTF is "better" than, say, "StarWriter 3.0 Template". Both sound equally foreign (though html maybe rings a bell... but no, wait -- that probably won't work unless I start up the internet first). Let's say they crossed their fingers and went with RTF after an email from a /. reader.... Boom! Disaster strikes:
"Saving in external formats may have caused information loss." Boy, that message frustrates me, because I know how most people read it (I remember switching my wife over to OO - she panicked at that dialog). They imagine whole paragraphs excised, pages gone poof. And worse -- why should they know how programs handle "files"? As far as they know, the original document (before the Save As) is also trashed now. "Information loss" is why they aren't supposed to open attachments anymore at work. Of course that looks bad.

This may all be easier a few generations from now, when the basic protocol of a computer program is taught in school and understood from an early age. For now, though, the education process is slow for most people... partly our fault, because we don't understand that new computer users are missing the basic assumptions that seem obvious to us. And also because there *are* huge pitfalls that aren't obvious. Driving a car is complicated and dangerous, but the big dangers are obvious at a basic level. Stay on the road, and don't hit other cars (or get in their way). On a computer, the catastrophes are subtle and don't feel any different from doing things right. You open an attachment from someone you know. You accidentally delete half your paper while placing the cursor and typing... then hit Save and close the word processor (recycle bin won't help you now!). Your finger presses the mouse button by accident while you're moving the mouse and drag some important system folders into another folder. Where did they go? Was that bad? Not until you reboot. You don't understand the choices on a dialog, and click the wrong button. Your DSL provider only mentioned "firewall software" somewhere in the install booklet, and you didn't know what that meant so you skipped it (my parents just got cable broadband, and I asked my Mom about this -- she'd never heard the term before).

The frustrating thing is that using a computer *could* be so much easier and safer... ah, well. What was my point here again? Oh, yeah -- education required. More than most people think.

Re:About OOo...

[UnknownSoldier]

> Before the education process, the trouble with OpenOffice is simple -- as long as they're using Word, they can save a document and most people will be able to read it.

> But when they start using OpenOffice, they'll find that when they save a document now almost NO ONE can use it.

Three words: Export as PDF

Unless you're telling me they are emailing docs that both parties are adding to?!

--
The Bible is infallable or perfect!? Right, which *version* would that be now? Better yet, let's consider the sources...
- Horace Meyer Kallen said Book of Job was lifted from an early and obscure Greek play
- Immanuel Velikovsky admitted "many parallels" between Vedic Hymns and Books of Joel and Isaiah
- Zecharia Sitchin claimed Book of Genesis based on Sumerian creation myth
- Noah from Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh
- The Psalms were taken word for word from Akhenaton's Hymns to the Sun
- The Ten Commandments were taken wholly from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Re:About OOo...

[DrSkwid]

Still going on about the Bible? That's so Nineteenth Century, you must live somewhere pretty primitive.

Re:About OOo...

[KingOfBLASH]

You know, I agree with you about how education is necessary. However, I run Slackware, and after a few months of instruction my girlfriend (a non-techie) could navigate around KDE and do anything she might need when she was over (like use OpenOffice to open and edit a document), surf the net, and even mount a CDRom drive and eject it from the command line. (Although she tells me it's a silly security precaution and she prefers CDs to just be there when she inserts the CD). However, she is proof that the education process can be successful.

Re:About OOo...

[UnknownSoldier]

> Still going on about the Bible? That's so Nineteenth Century, you must live somewhere pretty primitive.

You still depend on the wheel? That's so old, you must still be using primitive technology.

Obviously, or not so obvious in your case, the point was to educate those who still depend on it.

Peace

Re:About OOo...

[jtheory]

Three words: Export as PDF

Unless you're telling me they are emailing docs that both parties are adding to?!

That's a big part of my point -- you're assuming all kinds of knowledge they simply don't have until taught. It's not instinctive in any way. Why would they choose PDF over any other format available? How are they going to know the pros and cons of each? How they heck are they going to keep all of those meaningless acronyms straight? PDF, RTF, HTTP, WWW, it's all just a jumble of letters. Suppose they change over to OO, and are taught that it's possible to export into other formats... which is NOT an obvious feature. And that "PDF" is what they should use for sharing documents with other people (and that info goes on a sticky note on the monitor). Then they decide to pass the school newsletter to a friend to check it over. What do you mean, the friend can't open it? Oh, they can open it, but it doesn't go into Word, so they can't help edit it. Okay, now what?

Just think of the process, and notice how each step makes the person feel stupid. Every time they learn something new, it opens up new pitfalls.

easy

[Anonymous Coward]

bounce/drop/reject all messages that contain .doc, .xls, .pps attachments and letters:

m i c r o $ f t

Re:CS majors amaze me

[Bastian]

How in the world can someone make it to an upper-level CS class and still not have the basic skills it takes to discover what format a file extension stands for and go about finding an application that will open it?

Reminds me of when I was a TA in the CS dept. at my college. Students would regularly come to the help sessions with programs that wouldn't compile so I could more or less read the compiler's error and warning messages to them verbatim.

Student: "Why won't this compile?"
TA: "Well, let's try to compile it so I can see what's up. Oh, the compiler says that there's a parse error on line 40. So look at line 40 and see if you can find anything wrong."
Student: "Ummm. . . "
TA: "Look at the end of the line."
Student: "Oh look, I forgot a closing parenthesis."

Alls I can say is that if CS majors have problems like this with compiling C source, I have my doubts that the battle over file formats will ever amount to something more of a holy war where I'm doomed to fail but obligated to fight.

Bounce it......

[BestNicksRTaken]

....with a nice Macro virus, should teach 'em a lesson.

Send as MS Works documents.

[jptechnical]

Then you can be sure noone can open it!

Re:RTF? RTF?! Sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

RTF is a horrible, wretched standard. And it's proprietary, to boot. (Don't believe me? Point me to the standard.)

Here you go. Geez, how hard was it to type in "RTF Specification" into Google?

RTF has never, ever been proprietary. Microsoft explicitly created it as an open-format, simple text standard that Word and anyone else could read/write. NeXT jumped on the bandwagon back in 1987 or so; and Edit.app read/wrote versions of RTF as its standard format. That's why MacOS X's TextEdit.app does RTF as standard now (it's derived from Edit.app) All of NeXT documentation was in RTF. NeXTmail and NewsGrazer both sent and received in RTF standard.

Mark Crispin more or less created and heavily pushed MIME's "rich text" format as a response to NeXTmail's use of RTF. He was on early comp.sys.next groups ranting about how NeXTmail sucked because it wasn't readable by ordinary text editors (it was uuencoded RTFD) and MIME was going to take over the world. Everyone hated him. But he was right.

Nice to see people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about...

Alternatively...

[BrokenHalo]

An equally quick solution is to send back your response as an OpenOffice .sxw document.

It gets the message across.

Re:Alternatively...

[darc]

No, it really doesn't get the message across, which is the entire problem. It gets you a message back that says "your attachment doesn't work with windows". Like it or not, SXW is a very unpopular format, whereas DOC is very popular. Sending stuff in SXW doesn't send your message, only miscommunication. It simply isn't practical to do so.

Re:Alternatively...

[BrokenHalo]

Sending stuff in SXW doesn't send your message, only miscommunication

The message I had in mind was that people shouldn't take it for granted that "everybody" uses MSWord.

It's not, after all, that hard a concept, and unless you're very young, you will have already seen evidence of this. Between 10 and 15 years ago, for example, it was perfectly acceptable for there to be opposing camps for document formats (WordPerfect, Word, Works and all those others). People accepted these incompatibilities and just got on with their jobs. Hence if something needed to be accessible by everyone, you sent it in text. No problem.

Now there are cross-platform options for sophisticated formatting of documents, there is no excuse for insisting on the use of a package widely regarded as the product of a bullying monopoly.

You're thinking of .doc.pif

[Gary Destruction]

.DOC files are fine by themselves as long as you have a good virus scanner and have macros turned off. There's always the possibility of a trojan horse being in a .DOC file so it's not a bad idea to have a trojan scanner. But just about any file type could have a trojan in it. Chances are, if it's a virus, it's going to be .doc.pif.

Promote PDF

[FFFish]

There are several free PDF-creation tools out there. At least two of them are dead easy for even the most inept user to install -- I know, because I've told a few of those inept users to install 'em, and they succeeded.

PDF isn't a cure-all, but it's "good enough". Good enough presentation, good enough file size, good enough security, good enough compatibility between systems.

I find that most people actually *want* to send PDF: they know it's what the pros would do, and they know it's better than sending the raw, editable source file.

So I suggest sending this:

Your mail of [date], subject: [subject], was rejected by my virus scanner because of the [filename].DOC attachment. It considers the risk of virus infection from that type of file to be too high.

Please use [freepdf?], [pdf995?], or other PDF-creation software to print that document to a PDF file. PDFs will be accepted by my virus software without any problem at all.

Thank you kindly,
me.

My e-mail sig

[PeekabooCaribou]

My signature on all outgoing mails is my name, e-mail address, some info from uname, and a link to Jeff Goldberg's "MS-Word is Not a document exchange format." I don't know how many people actually read it, but at least it's something.

.doc

[atomic-penguin]

Was .doc not a standard extension for Rich Text Format at one time? Call me crazy, but I swear I remember this.

--
Extensions, what are extensions? You want to know what a file is use /bin/file

Official Documents

[retsil]

I remember 2 years ago I was sent renrollment information in a .doc format. I was fuming over the whole affair and the poor office administrator coped my flack in person. It didn't dawn on them that a considerable number of people in faculty use Unix terminals for accessing email and that such terminals didn't have Microsoft Office. I really felt like putting in a support call to the Unix administrator saying that it appears that the University policy requires all computers to have MS Office.

My Solution

[limekiller4]

I just reply and ask if they can send it in a different format. This does the same thing you're suggesting by the same method that Microsoft is trying to employ. It makes it an inconvenience for them to have to use something that is closed and not used by everyone. If this happens enough, a person will either suffer, send in several formats at once or send in a format that nobody has a problem with.

As a "reason," I might state that I don't run Windows. This enough is a brain-jarrer. "What? There are other options??"

keep it simple

[hak1du]

Just say "Although the file arrived undamaged, I'm afraid I couldn't read your attachment. You could perhaps send it again in PDF or plain text format."

If you want to be more specific, you can say "I can't get Microsoft Word for my machine and therefore can't your attachment. Could you please send it in PDF or plain text format?"

Long-winded talk of "monopolies" and "politics" are unlikely to be any more effective and will only make you look unprofessional to many people.

Bullshit.

[jotaeleemeese]

A polite reply saying "I don't have Word, please send in X format" is enough.

Nobody is under any obligation to buy MS products to communicate with other people.

Thanks for the help... Not!

[jotaeleemeese]

Quoting:

"Word 97/2000 Viewer (Windows 95/98/NT/2000)"

I will not tell you which OS I am running but have a guess....

Don't be dense....

[jotaeleemeese]

"If it's your boss or client, then accept the Word document. After all, you're being paid to do so."

If it is work related you should be provided with the necessary tools to do your work.

If I get a document in a propietary format for which I don't have a tool, even my boss gets a reply requesting the correct tool to read the software.

Since this means a complete computer system (I don't use MS stuff at home) i get documents back in a format I can use (normaly text or variations).

Re:Don't be dense....

[Brandybuck]

Most employees will already be provided with the "necessary tools" they need. Many companies, mine included, will also provide these "necessary tools" to their telecommuting employees. If you've taken the company provided Windows machine and made it a dual-boot Linux machine, blame yourself before you blame your boss when you encounter incompatibilities.

For example, I made my company provided desktop dual boot to FreeBSD. Once in a while I will encounter a Word document that OpenOffice won't handle. I have no recourse but to boot into Windows to see it, and no one to blame but myself if it happens to be inconvenient.

As for clients, you deal with whatever they send you if you want them to be your client. If they're Mac users and they send you a something in Mac-only format, you either go get a Mac or you go get a new client. Ditto if they send it to you in a Microsoft-only format.

Simple, target privacy issues.

[jotaeleemeese]

Reply saying that you found the "hidden" information in the Word document (SCO and many others can attest to this feature).

Ask if they would not prefer to send documents in the future using a different document format that does not dsitribute their personal information.

Two law firms I was in touch with changed to mostly plain text just for this comment of mine....

Sheesh? Sheesh?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

It's proprietary alright, but could you explain the horrible and wretched parts? I'm not picking a fight here, I was just under the impression that RTF is pretty well documented, safe and (despite the amount of control words) pretty easy to implement...

Re:Sheesh? Sheesh?

[Planesdragon]

It's proprietary alright, but could you explain the horrible and wretched parts?

quote wikipedia:

"RTF is a poorly standardised format with incompatibilities reported even between different Microsoft applications, and tends to be rarely used for document distribution."

A particular 10-page heavily-formatted word document on my HDD is about 200 kb. Saved as RTF, the file format doubles--and the formatting looks even worse when OOo reads it.

well I do the easy thing

[hswerdfe]

I open it in OpenOffice.org

make what ever corrections are needed to it, save it and send it back as an OpenOffice native XML format.

What usually happens is they get pissed cause they can't open it.....it helps them experiance the frustration people can have with non open systems....

when and if they bitch.... I suggest maybe we can agree on a propper Documnet exchange format.

usually RTF, CSV, PDF, or HTML

depends

[next1]

luckily for me my company is primarily open source, however there's always the sales and managerial types sending through their word docs and excel sheets and worse still, expecting the same in return.

my strategy is to write docs in open office and then just before sending save out a copy to word, then i send them both off. the receivers can then do as they please.

Fight fire with fire...

[djdanlib]

Send them a document in an open format they cannot possibly open on their machine, like GIMP, *Tex, or some XML-based OOO-specific format. If they complain about not being able to open it, say: "Hey, how about that. I couldn't open your file either!!" Then you can either work out a compromise, or get beat up for being a geek. (Discretion is advised to avoid the second scenario.)

It's the way windows works

[wowbagger]

The reason folks use DOC is because of the way Windows works.

Case in point:

I am working with a customer who is having problems interfacing to our equipment over GPIB. He is having a problem, and is running the GPIB logger program to see what is going on.

So, he gets the fault on screen. He wants to send me the info. Rather than a) telling GPIBSpy to save the log data as text, or b) marking the text in the GPIBSpy window, then pasting it into the email message, he does things "The Windows Way" - he does an ALT-PRINTSCREEN, then opens Word, then does a paste, then File->Email. Boom - what should be a simple 5K file is now a 100K BMP inside a 200K Word document. And of course, now when I want to copy and paste the section of transaction that has a problem I cannot because it is no longer text but a BMP.

Ditto with our physical plant manager (the guy who's department changes the lights, moves the desks, and so on.) Everytime he wants to send a memo, what does he do - open email client, compose email, send?

NO. He does things "The Windows Way": Start Word. Open Template->Standard memo (which has a company logo graphic, so it will be large). Write memo (Please don't park in the west parking lot tomorrow - we will be spraying for weeds and we don't want to screw up the paint on your car). File->Email. Subject: Memo. Mail text: Please read the attached memo. Send to all users.

Microsoft has made it very easy to start all documents in Word. In a way, this is good - it makes it easier for the users. However, it also makes it HARDER to work with any document that is NOT a Word document. It also means that users are trained that all the world is a nail, since they are using the hammer of Word.

Motivation for Filename Extension Hiding

[Tackhead]

> But the quickest solution to ridding .doc documents is not to switch software tools, operating systems, and retrain users. Why not just rename .doc to .renamethisbacktodotdoc before sending it out, thus saving humanity from the hell that is anything microsoft hasn't touched yet?

Geek: "I can't read .doc files. Please use a non-proprietary format."

Luser: "What's a .doc file? I dragged an icon labeled '2004 annual report' and you tell me you can't read it?"

Re:Motivation for Filename Extension Hiding

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of geek can't read a FUCKING .doc file? HOLY SHIT! Come on! There is a free reader available from MS and OpenOffice will also open the thing. NOT TO MENTION OFFICE WILL OPEN IT! What's wrong with you people? If someone told me they couldn't open a .doc file I'd really wonder. Especially if they're supposedly in IT! It's a VERY COMMON format and any self-respecting geek should be able to view it. FUCK!

Open office Coup

[Craig Maloney]

I tried posting a story earlier this year on Slashdot about starting an OpenOffice Coup. The idea would be to start sending out OpenOffice documents to people instead of .doc and .xls files. When they complain, just tell them that OpenOffice is freely available, and they should download it to read your document/spreadsheet. Might be something to try in the future. Honestly, though, I'm tired of people sending me .doc files when a .pdf would convery the information just fine. :)

Be amazed, be very amazed

[Anonymous Coward]

At my university retention is king.

Retention meaning that once a student is in the university he/she must not leave until graduation. So, in particular, failing students is considered a Bad Thing. Even worse, professors are evaluated poorly if more than the expected number of students drops a class.

So it is not uncommon to have classes in which everyone gets a 2.0 (or better) - even if they do next to nothing.

Now, given such a set of policies, what point is there in students actually attempting to learn anything? They'll pass anyway, no matter what.

I just watched a senior level cs major who could not figure out how to install a simple library (on windows yet) given a set of fairly complete documentation.

Take my domain www.no-doc.org

[Florian]

Several years ago, I wanted to start a grassroots campaign against MS Word as an exchange document format as well and registered the domain no-doc.org for that purpose. My idea was to gather wide-ranging support not only from computer programmers, but also from non-technical people like professional writers, and spread a "no-doc.org" logo (perhaps with a crossed-out Microsoft Word file icon) as a popular image on stickers, t-shirts, website banners etc..

However, I gave up on that project simply because, unlike for example in the case of gif vs. png images, there is no easy replacement to be advertised and offered to non-technical people:

• RTF is nothing but .doc in ASCII encoding, but otherwise it's also a format defined and controlled by Microsoft (and whose newer versions I believe are undocumented).
• .swx, the OpenOffice/StarOffice format is currently not supported by any other program.
• HTML doesn't preserve important formatting information like footnotes and is too inconsistently implemented across applications
• DocBook and LaTeX are semantically structured formats and hence not capable enough of supporting documents formatted with no structured semantics; you can use them to create output in other formats, but you can't automatically transform arbitrary formatting into them.
• PDF is a write-only format
• plain ASCII text offers not no formatting at all and is incompatible across platform/language-specific special character and CR/LF encoding

In other words, a format that is open across applications and platforms, sufficiently powerful in its encoding both of typographic (font settings etc.) and structural (footnotes etc.) layout and widely supported by mainstream word processors (and be it only everything but MS Word) doesn't exist. As long as this doesn't change, for example with OASIS' current efforts to standardize an open office document format or large cross-application support for the OpenOffice file format, any "no-doc" advocacy is elitist and doomed to alienate even people who might be sympathetic for political reasons.

But if anyone wants to seriously do a grassroots campaign against using Microsoft's proprietary file formats, I am happy to transfer the no-doc.org domain to them for free.

The "girlfriend" phenomenon

[jtheory]

Yeah, I'm with you.

The thing to remember about your girlfriend on Slackware, though, is that it'd be a totally different story if you weren't right there, giving her pointers. She knows you can be trusted, and so she learns the steps by rote (even using the command line isn't too hard, if you know exactly what to type), and she feels safe doing them. She's got you as a safety net, too - if something "doesn't look right" she can just ask

Most people don't have such reliable sources of help, alas. Especially not for free. The pool of people who understand enough to properly troubleshoot, etc., it still pretty small (though it's growing). It's kind of a chicken/egg problem, so it's a slow process.

Re:The "girlfriend" phenomenon

[KingOfBLASH]

Well, I think in the beginning, you're right about the safety net. If I weren't there I am not sure she would have been able to learn. However, there comes a point when she can stand on her own, esp. on an easier to use distro like Mandrake. But, it's a slow process. She will teach others, and they will teach even others, until we take over the world.

Re:The "girlfriend" phenomenon

[jtheory]

She will teach others, and they will teach even others, until we take over the world.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? :)

Re:The "girlfriend" phenomenon

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG Hobos invading slashdot???!!!!

not over the top

[poptones]

DOC files are a stupid security risk. And no, they ain't free. Here's what I suggest: take that DOC file, open it, and edit it. Put some stupid or even overtly offensive remarks under the school's letterhead, then return it to the sender. Explain how easy it is for anyone to edit a DOC file and how much they potentially risk by making their official letterhead a format owned by the company that filled the world with the least secure computers since the VIC20. If you're really feeling adventurous check out the previous edits and see what kind of embarassing things you can find to revive from the file itself and include those in open text.

Signed PDF files can still be had, but they're much more secure and they're also just about as ubiquitous when it comes to people being able to make use of the information within. Provide a link to ghostscript and show'em how easy it is to install a pdf "printer" with (most of) the bells and whistles.

I feel your pain...

[Galileo430]

I can feel your pain. I'm a tech at a college newspaper that uses Macs. We do not own a copy of Office. After all, we have AppleWorks that came with the machine. People don't seem to get the concept that .doc isn't a universal thing. No matter how many times I try to explain this the response I get is "why not?". I put OpenOffice on the machines however, they don't like the interface and refuse to use it.

I've just given up at this point. I have broken down and submitted a request for 10 copies of Office v.X

Re:I feel your pain...

[WinterSolstice]

OO.o on Mac has come a long way, but I have to agree with your users. It is awful.

I find KWord looks nicer, but is a serious hassle to use and install on Mac, so no help there.
I wish AppleWorks could open Word docs reliably. I also wish AppleWorks had the ability to export.

At least OSX can print to PDF as an easy choice. Makes life a lot easier. I wish Windows did that. (Lots of wishes. Few results, eh?)

-WS

How about at Universities?

[BigBlockMopar]

See this or this. RMS and many others are all over it.

From my alma mater:

The Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, the one faculty which should know better is the only faculty at the school where I've seen course notes in Word and PowerPoint. Everyone else does HTML and PDF. Assignments have to be submitted with a Windows binary called "submit.exe". And, most ironically, for a Java programming class, at that. What fscking idiots.

Makes me so proud.

Re:How about at Universities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Write their alumni-donations-guys a letter saying that the reason you won't donate is this practice, and I bet they seriously do talk about changing.

Get a dozen of your fellow students to write such a letter and I bet it stops pretty fast.

Messages like that are typical of Open Source.

[BigBlockMopar]

"Saving in external formats may have caused information loss." Boy, that message frustrates me, because I know how most people read it (I remember switching my wife over to OO - she panicked at that dialog). They imagine whole paragraphs excised, pages gone poof. And worse -- why should they know how programs handle "files"? As far as they know, the original document (before the Save As) is also trashed now. "Information loss" is why they aren't supposed to open attachments anymore at work. Of course that looks bad.

This is typical of the sorts of problems I rant about in my page dedicated to the reasons why Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet.

What OO needs to have is, in the drop down file menu, "Save as Word file", and then pop up a box asking for selection of the filename and five buttons: "Recipient is using Word 95", "Recipient is using Word 97", "Recipient is using Word 2000", "Recipient is using Word XP", "Don't know what version of Word the Recipient is using". At the bottom of the box, another button, smaller: "If the document won't be edited by the recipient, please consider clicking here to send as Adobe Acrobat PDF."

The loss of information warning should include, at the very least, the word "formatting" - as in, "Warning: saving in this file type will result in some loss of formatting information." Better still, though, would be "You've asked OO to save the document in a file type which might not support all the features of this document. Your text and graphics will all be saved, but it might not be laid out quite as you intended. Are you sure you wish to continue?"

Developers need to remember to think in terms of the lowest common denominator.

Re:Messages like that are typical of Open Source.

[rco3]

Thank you. Voice of reason. Your suggestions are perfect.

Why Microsoft Word may be bad for your health ...

[daveewart]

I wrote an article a while ago about why Microsoft Word may be bad for your health. It was originally aimed at academics, but any 'intelligent' user should be able to grasp the main concepts.

Fonts missing -- use PDF so it looks good

[SgtChaireBourne]

The suite of formats referred to as MS-Word do not contain the fonts. I've seen more trouble from that and from minor differences in the formats for different versions, especially in areas where there are large groups of each version.

If it's distributed for printing, then there's no excuse not to use PDF which contains all the necessary information for it to be printed out as the author(s) intended.

All is not lost.... Make 'em paranoid :-)

[SomethingOrOther]

Just tell them that embeded data in the .doc gave away there personal details, home phone number, time they spent editing the document etc (Go to Files, properties).

Works every time :-)

What gets me...

[phorm]

Is when somebody emails me a word document that is full of... text

Yes, that's right, no fancy formatting, no special fonts, just text. In fact, this happens rather regularly in many organizations... as a simple bulletin is mailed as a .DOC because it was also printed from word for the old nailing-to-wall method.

CTRL+A, CTRL+C, CTRL+V... paste it into an email and save the recipients a little confusion. Word documents (or other attachments) just take up space and mail email that much less searchable. Finding the memo sent in HTML/text 2 months ago is much easier than playing find-the-missing-word-attachment.

Deliver Us, Oh SVG!

[4of12]

I have lamented about this for many years.

I've generally caved to ignorance of the masses, but only partially.

I used to ask people to resend those attachments as PDF files so I could read them, and I still do that to some extent (most people, even oblivious users of Windows boxes, understand that Word is not Word is not Word, that different versions of Word, Macs etc., can all affect how a a document appears). More now, if I have to view it, I just open it up in Open Office and create my own PDF.

Otherwise, if I have to run Word to contribute to a collaborative document, I just do barebones "get the content in" and spend zero time worrying about making Word do the right thing.

My life's too short to futz with Word's formatting quirks. I still take time to get things right in LaTeX, but at least my files will still as good in 20 years as they were 20 years ago.

And I look forward to the inevitable faster web rot that will accompany contents that are offered in this moving target "standard" format. It will teach people that ".doc" is not a good thing for archival and, dare they think it, for everyday use?

Plus, be part of the solution: Compose and send email that is plain ASCII text.

What is really needed to obliterate .doc, .ppt and .xls and other strange formats is for a superseding XML format like SVG, with precise vector-based formatting, dynamic effects, to start taking over the web. For this to happen, though, we need:

• high-quality, free renderers (Mozilla);
• easy-to-use, free, high-quality composition tools (Sodipodi?);
• free, open, published standards (W3C);
• good repertoire of free, high quality, scalable outline fonts with international support.

OOo

[RevRagnarok]

On a web site for my condo association (please, no Nazi jokes!) we have the newsletters in DOC format. But I created them in OpenOffice, and I have a link to a "free DOC editor" which just goes to OpenOffice.org. I have a similar link for "free PDF reader" for the PDF files we have.

- RR

I use freaking Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

or I use Open Office if I'm using linux at the time... get with it... Microsoft owns you no matter how hard you try to avoid it