What is Digg?178 Comments
- GreatDrok, on 10/12/2007, -6/+69I'm always amazed when people send me a word document and when I open it I find that their e-mail message is inside. You know, just plain text. I have no idea who, how or why someone told them that using Word as their e-mail composer was a good thing but they clearly need a lead enema.
- philz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37Love those people who send pictures embedded because.. you know.. you cannot sent just pictures like that.. they need that warm fuzzy feeling and things like that..
- Utopian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27CutePDF Writer lets you print to PDF. It's freeware.
http://www.cutepdf.com/products/CutePDF/writer.asp - DBCubix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24I know why he doesn't have a girlfriend... cause he won't open those word attachments.
- JinxRLM, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24I really enjoy it when people send Word-files with nothing but a jpeg inside. That's the real kicker for me.
- Hawk2007, on 10/12/2007, -11/+32"In fact, Microsoft has deliberately decided not to publish versions of its word processor for many of the world's most popular operating systems"
I'm pretty sure Windows is the most popular operating system in the world by a longshot, and MS most certainly publishes word for it. - jejones, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23@doctornkul: fire up OpenOffice. Click on "File." There's an "export as PDF" choice.
- jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16@doctornkul
You can create PDFs for free from any text editor/word processor in the world. Just get a free PDF printer driver like http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/. Word was one of the *LAST* programs to allow direct creation of PDFs.
As long as you're comfortable with a certain percentage of your receipients being unable to read your documents, there's nothing wrong with Word. Otherwise you should use something else. - dance, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19I'm sorry, Microsoft's new 'OpenDocument' format? Maybe you should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docx - mingistech, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17and when you send out your resume... do it as a .pdf
this way the formatting will always look correct and the recipient will not be able to edit it. - Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18No, it speaks for popularity.
- comradechimp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14We have entire teams of testers at my workplace who do that with screenshots when raising bug reports and then think you're being unreasonable when you ask them not to.
Java stack traces with the line breaks removed and rendered in Comic Sans MS are another favourite trick of theirs. - comradechimp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I do, with the result that I usually get a reply saying "can you send me that as a Word document?"
Sad but true. - schlongmeister, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I'm also a designer who gets this crap almost daily, and it's become one of my biggest pet peeves. Idiots will place a thumbnail image of their company logo (or just any thumbnail they pulled off of some website) in a Word doc and send it to me, then wonder why I can't do ***** with it! Hell, the ONLY reason I even have MS Word installed on my Mac is for these retards and their Word attachments. From now on everyone's getting alink to this site...
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17Tristan's site is excellent. You will also like:
http://www.nothingisreal.com/girlfriend/ - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"Documents produced with one version of Microsoft Word cannot always be read by other versions of Microsoft Word."
Yeah, PDF anything woth formatting for the reason above and many others. I hate how a document won't stay consitstent across versions. - kbeeveer46, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Me, too. I have a friend that, instead of attaching an image in an email by itself, will first put the picture in a word document and attach the word file in the email
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Word Viewer 2003 will allow you to see all word document versions correctly: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
How to remove hidden data in word documents: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2006-01-19-hidden-msword-data_x.htm
If file size is an issue, you need to get a broadband connection. - Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -10/+19If your business requires you to read things that people send you, and people are sending you these things as a word document, it's up to you to figure out how to read them.
Just get a copy of Office - your little voice isn't going to change the way the world works. - coolbru, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12I quite agree - Word is the worst possible format for shipping functional text around in. As a distribution format it's a pretty bad idea too. PDF, xml and plain text rock.
- cmiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@r2d7: I do have a job working with computers... and most people here now uses RTF instead of DOC. It takes minimal effort to switch from one to the other, and it's well worth it.
@doctornkul: You can format RTF files. Our quality assurance guy writes really complicated tables with the procedure and screenshots, and saves them as RTF. They're a lot smaller that way too, which is how I sold him on it.
I'm a really big fan of jus tusing plaintext because usually you really don't need any formatting options. For those times where formatting is necessary, RTF is the way to go in my opinion. - amsoell, on 04/20/2009, -2/+10@doctornkul
You can print to PDF for free from any Windows application.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
And, I believe, this functionality is built into OS X if that's your flavor. - MarkByers, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11This happens to me because it is so damn unintuitive to take a screenshot in Windows. People don't know how to do it, so they experiment until they realise they can paste it into Word. It never occurs to most people to open up an application called 'Paint' to take a screenshot. Please fix this. All decent operating systems can handle screenshots sensibly. Why can't Windows?
I can only assume it will be fixed in Vista but still what about all the people still using XP? - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12"If Word documents were are precarious and unreadable as you claim, no one on Earth would use them."
If word documents are the document format preloaded onto the computer you just paid for and you don't knwo of the alternatives, you would use them. It is stupid to say that people don't use anything that is bad. For example, lets say your local grocery store is *****, the people there are rude, the prices are high and the produce is old. If that is the only option for food you know of guess where you're going to get your food. - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"Only Microsoft can decide what people do and don't use to send documents."
What the hell? - Mace37, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7He'll only look at women out 2 standard deviations? Wow, that's pretty high standards. That's why he'll never get a girlfriend. Also because he's too busy making excuses over actually looking.
- jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8If I get this ***** from a:
Employee: I hope you've enjoyed working here, because no doubt by now there are two security guards outside your cubicle waiting to escort you out. Don't bother putting us down as a reference.
Contractor: Enjoy your standards, because you sure won't be enjoying my company's money. I'll be sure to pass on your sentiments to anyone asking for recos on your services.
Friend: LOL, stfu and just open it retard.
Client: Thanks for passing on this great advice, I'll be sure to pass it up and around the company. You'll find the file reattached as a pdf.
Employer: I'm so sorry for making this mistake, and it'll never happen again. I've already hand delivered a printed version of the report/(whatever) to your secretary and reattached it here as a text doc and pdf. Again, I'm sorry, and I'll make sure to notify all of the people under me of this policy immediately. - valona, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11I think everyone here who works in the Real World (TM), should approach management and tell them that they do not want to recieve .DOC files anymore, and to send them in another open source format. CC this to All Addresses so that everyone in the organisation knows your stance. Point them in the direction of the website. I find non-IT people are really interested in FOSS, and will appreciate this new information. Let's all meet back in this thread tomorrow and see how everyone got on.
- strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Yeah, wtf is this guy talking about?
- twinklyJesus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@arthurbarnhouse:
I think we pretty-well have standarization down. Business has standardized, a long time ago, on Word. What this actually appears to be is someone "crusading" to change standardization. Good luck with that... - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -11/+17That's because you're not a designer. I constantly get ***** sending me material via Word, and they format it in the most ridiculous ways. I work for a small company that really can't afford 3 different licenses for Mac versions of the software, and frankly, I don't think it's necessary, especially when every computer comes with an rtf editor.
I'm now going to start sending this link back to anyone who sends me a word doc. - axemachine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9The problem is not Word, is the ***** that sends you the document in the first place. Even if it's a TXT file users will end up sending you crap.
PDF is not much better if the person just make it from Word. - Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6As long as they can read HTML emails, they'll be fine.
- theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Word reader, for those who can't afford Word, is absolutely free.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en - drchadwick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Right. And if Windows was unstable, ugly, and full of security holes, nobody would use it either.
- DeejayLupo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13Agreed.
---
Fictional response from my client:
Dear snotty programmer,
Thank you for preaching your anti-Microsoft sentiments to me, your paying customer. If you refuse to make use of the most popular document format and the only format I know how to use, I have no choice but to go to someone who won't bite the hand that feeds. I'm sorry you have to deal with strange formatting issues, but seriously dude, you can probably find a way to deal with it for what you charge.
Sincerely,
Client
This boilerplate may be helpful if the person sending you word doc's is your employee or someone beneath you, but most times I get a weird word document it's from a client-- and I'm not about to lecture them on what word processor they use. - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@Matt2k
Why would you consider Word necessary for the job? Word is a poor word processor. You would know that if you used some of the others. - Loonacy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Does Word Viewer 2003 work in Linux?
- doctornkul, on 10/12/2007, -18/+23The article is great and all pointing out MSword's flaws, but really, what if I wanted to have tables/pictures/graphs within my document (which isn't uncommon)? How could you do this in an RTF or plain text document? Not very well (not at all, actually). HTML wouldn't handle it very well (it can do some stuff, like formatting to the left, right or center, but it's hard to get it the way you want without serious coding). PDFs are a good alternative, but the only software I know that makes them for free is MS Word 2007 Beta 2, and I bet 90% or more of the office wouldn't figure out how to open a PostScript document.
Also, to MS's credit, their new OpenDocument format (*.docx) is about 10 times smaller in file size than than the old .doc format, and hopefully it will actually be 'open'. - jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7And you tell them, "I don't have Word, can you buy it for me?"
- compuwarescc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Foxit Reader is FAR superior to Adobe Reader - Just download it, put it somewhere (like program files) and run it, it will associate itself automatically with pdf files.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php - mingistech, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13Windows and Mac OS.
I'm pretty sure they have their bases covered. :) - CaseyUCF, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13matt2k, get a clue
- MarkByers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Oh yeah, Microsoft's .doc format for Word is a standard. But it's a standard designed to get people to upgrade, it's not a standard designed to be interoperable. There is a difference. Most people just see 'standard' and their eyes light up, but they don't look into it further. Not that it makes any difference. As I said before, you can't change people's habits unless you control their operating system and force change upon them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8hahah that was great. here's the comment someone left in response to that article: http://www.nothingisreal.com/girlfriend/mail01
- gummih, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't speak for everyone but I'm really sick and tired of pirated software. I would like to own a legal copy of office at home but the amount of usage simply doesn't justify the purchase. That's why I have now stopped using Office at home and switched to OpenOffice. It's not perfect but it's free and legal so I'm happy about it.
Where I live, huge amount of home users are using pirated copies of Office and I find it a bit assuming that they expect everyone to have Office. I mean I'm not bugging people about it but I think it would make sense not to use word as a general transfer format.
I'm doing this with a lot of software, out with the pirated, in with the free. And right now, I'm not sure I'll be paying the extra buck for having a "free" copy of Vista on my next PC. - jbus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Tell me... What computer can't read a PDF? A open format that has countless readers on all platforms
- Justathought, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Is there a Linux version? You know for all those people that cannot afford Windows.
- chinocochino, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"If you're going to do business in the real world, you need to be able to handle working with the format that 90% of the business world uses."
I think the point is to make people aware that sending .doc attatchments is OK, as long as you understand the risks involved. That they may contain malicious code, lose formatting, or expose previous editing within the document. Mr. Fortune 500 here is using a ***** file format prone to abuse and errors for his zillion dollar communications. and all us linux/unix/ zealots will laugh our asses off when his stock tanks because some chump ***** up and used a word attatchment for sensitive information. - vestige, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7"Documents produced with one version of Microsoft Word cannot always be read by other versions of Microsoft Word."
The file format has been frozen since Office 97. Over what amounts to about a decade they have tried to keep the format as backwards compatible as possible while still introducing new features. -
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