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Talking about firebrands...
May. 9th, 2002 01:12 pmIn an essay titled We Can Put an End to Word Attachments, GNU guru Richard Stallman suggests that, if we dislike receiving e-mail attachments in MS Word format, “maybe we can stop this practice with a simple collective effort.”
“All we have to do,” writes Stallman, “is ask each person who sends us a Word file to reconsider that way of doing things.”
I think it’s a well-written piece, in general. In truth, I am a bit disappointed with Stallman’s opening shot against Word, where he claims that “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.”
While there are some features that do not interoperate among the various versions of Word (text highlighting comes to mind here), I’ve never been unable to open a file because it was too “new” for my version of Word. (I run Word 97 on my desktop and Word 2000 on my VAIO, and have received and processed more Word files than I care to think about over the years.)
The issue of what to do with Word (and Excel, and PowerPoint) files is a pretty central one for the future of computing and the fates of Windows and Linux. One school of thought, as exemplified by Star Office, views such formats - or at least the Word format - as a sort of lingua franca among people who share files, and therefore try to employ them.
The major shortcoming with this approach is that although there is, apparently, a published standard for What Microsoft Word Files Are Made Of, that standard is rarely followed to the letter, especially by a large software company with offices in Redmond, Washington.
On the other hand, avoiding the Word format has its own associated difficulties, too.
In other respects, Stallman’s piece is well put together, and the samples he provides of “polite” requests to not use Word are just that, although I suppose you could consider them as troll bait, if you were really looking for an argument.
In the final analysis, Stallman is right when he observes: “People who disregard one polite request may change their practice when they receive multiple polite requests from various people.”
It’s worth a shot.
Cheers…
“All we have to do,” writes Stallman, “is ask each person who sends us a Word file to reconsider that way of doing things.”
I think it’s a well-written piece, in general. In truth, I am a bit disappointed with Stallman’s opening shot against Word, where he claims that “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.”
While there are some features that do not interoperate among the various versions of Word (text highlighting comes to mind here), I’ve never been unable to open a file because it was too “new” for my version of Word. (I run Word 97 on my desktop and Word 2000 on my VAIO, and have received and processed more Word files than I care to think about over the years.)
The issue of what to do with Word (and Excel, and PowerPoint) files is a pretty central one for the future of computing and the fates of Windows and Linux. One school of thought, as exemplified by Star Office, views such formats - or at least the Word format - as a sort of lingua franca among people who share files, and therefore try to employ them.
The major shortcoming with this approach is that although there is, apparently, a published standard for What Microsoft Word Files Are Made Of, that standard is rarely followed to the letter, especially by a large software company with offices in Redmond, Washington.
On the other hand, avoiding the Word format has its own associated difficulties, too.
In other respects, Stallman’s piece is well put together, and the samples he provides of “polite” requests to not use Word are just that, although I suppose you could consider them as troll bait, if you were really looking for an argument.
In the final analysis, Stallman is right when he observes: “People who disregard one polite request may change their practice when they receive multiple polite requests from various people.”
It’s worth a shot.
Cheers…
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