Word Attachments

[Roman Wissner]

Mark Wallace wrote:
> The site you refer to is almost five years old.
>    
>   The premise is also no longer true.   Open Office opens .doc files and I haven't seen too many problems in formatting.   It probably didn't in 2002.  It implies that Open Office isn't as versatile as it really is.
> 

I didn't actually want to start a discussion about this, but these are
the reasons for doing so:
I think that Microsoft Office documents best viewed using MS Office;
when I try to open them in OpenOffice I can read them but they will look
slightly different to what they should look like. That's why there are
special formats designed to look the same regardless of the platform
(e.g. PDF).
Secondly, accepting word documents requires software that can read word
documents. Since MS could change the document format relatively easily
with a new release this might lead to a period where we can't read the
attachments. I think it's better be on the safe side as far as that is
concerned.
Additionally, I don't agree with a some things the FSF says but I do
think that we should challenge the view that there is only Windows/MS
Office out there.

Anyway, that's just my (probably slightly paranoid) opinion on these
things. Maybe it's because I'm young and think that there might be a way
that Linux and other open source software might be recognized one day
(PCs with a choice of operating systems sold at PC World; free formats
for documents, etc; people making informed decisions about their
software [my school has the full MS Office packet, Macromedia
Dreamweaver etc, but most about half of our Sixth Form computers are
physically broken - surely there must be better way to invest that
money]...)

Respectfully Yours,
Roman Wissner
-- 
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html