Moving to non-Word formats [long]

[Peter Flynn]

On 16/06/2020 20:09, rikona wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 17:49:07 +0200 Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>> All because it made business email users use Microsoft Word as
>> their email editor.
> 
> Agreed - I had to live with that for a long time...

Many of us still do, among some of my clients, certainly.

>> An entire generation of users now do not know how to use threaded 
>> online discussions, and this is considered entirely normal and
>> nothing to worry about.

As I said, most business email is extremely short-lived and in most 
cases of no value once the moment has passed. A few items would be 
important: corporate decisions, contracts, employment, etc, which 
eventually find their way into PDFs (as Hans said, standard in most 
governmental circles where accessibility is important); but the vast 
bulk of business email is entirely ephemeral, so what businesses use for 
email is as unimportant as the content.

The otherwise excellent Hiri email client for MS-Exchange is predicated 
upon being easy to use for managers, as they typically limit their 
emails to a couple of sentences or so, as do Marketing. No-one cares if 
they top-post, out of ignorance or any other reason.

On 16/06/2020 17:20, Doug wrote:
[...]
> I have been grazing this thread, and I have to say this: if you're
> just writing code, or reminder messages to yourself, you can use any
> format you want, but if you're writing for someone else to read, and
> perhaps to publish, whether you like it or not, WORD is the format
> they expect, so use it.

I can generate it on demand, so my clients are happy. What we use 
internally is no concern of theirs unless their contract specifies 
otherwise.

> I save everything in .doc (1997-2003) format, because everyone in the
> world can read it and work with it.
A long way from being true, alas. Opening an old .doc file in LO/OO or 
any other non-MS product is often a challenge.

I am sure there are some people out there whose systems are so 
antiquated that they are pinned to .doc files, especially if they had 
text workflow pipeline engines from the late 90s which they have never 
updated, but their desktop systems use .docx. In general, fortunately, I 
don't have to deal with people who send me .doc files, or I re-save them 
as .docx and they have never complained.

> Like it or not, WORD is here to stay! 

That *really* isn't true. In 20 years time it will be a memory like 
WordPerfect, and certainly in 50 you'll have problems opening it.

Luckily I won't be around to see 50 years hence, but if the .doc format 
is still here to stay in 2040, Doug, remind me to buy you dinner :-)

Peter