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.

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"

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.

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!

[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.

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.